Class stretches on…

In the past couple of days we’ve covered culture (in three excruciatingly detailed classes), negotiations (in one brutal six-hour block), and a truly painful block titled “Coordinate With Interagency, Intergovernmental and Nongovernmental Organizations.” This last one involved lots and lots of discussion about how much we all value the United Nations and its contributions to building a better world.

Actually, the negotiation class was taught by a New Jersey cop and former SWAT guy who initially defined negotiation as a single sentence – Sir, could you move a little closer to the window, please?
Guaranteed laugh line in a room full of soldiers, that.

And again, although the course material is about as useful as the proverbial screen door on the submarine, the class interaction allows for us to reach consensuses on important issues for the Civil Affairs NCO.

Let me share some of those with you.

1 – Village cleanup projects are a giant waste of the American taxpayer’s dollars. Iraqis don’t care if their towns are ankle-deep in garbage. If they did, they’d ask for some of these projects. They don’t. It’s a common misconception of newly-arrived maneuver battalion commanders that paying for a bunch of some local bigwig’s cousins to pick up trash for a couple of weeks will enable these folks to see the light. They don’t care.

2 – Everybody likes to build schools because Children Are The Future. However, if there’s no system in place to hire and pay teachers, the utility of the new school is roughly zero immediately following the ribbon-cutting. If there is a system, but it’s entirely dependent on US dollars and contracting, it’s only slightly better than worthless.

3 – The nomadic subpopulation in Afghanistan is, apparently, the CA NCO’s worst nightmare, since this seems to be a group that travels around and has figured out they can get money and stuff from a wide range of US military units. Worst of all, they must be placated, since a large part of their economic heritage involves smuggling stuff across mountainous borders.

4 – Again, about the schools. Although economic growth initiatives don’t make for good ribbon-cutting pictures, we’ve decided that education without economic opportunity is bound to become either an expensive luxury, or the source of lots of well-educated Iraqis and Afghans working in other countries – neither of which is part of the overall goal.

5 – The Officer Efficiency Report should be changed to a GO/NO GO document in theatre. Far too many stupid ideas are initially conceptualized as “bullet points” on an OER. A good NCO can identify one of these ideas at 100 yards, but trying to stop one…well, imagine an armadillo on a Texas highway going toe-to-toe with a Peterbilt. Yeah. We know how that ends.

6 – The no-beer rule sucks. However, as dutiful noncommissioned officers in the US Army, we recognize that we are most effective when we train ourselves to live as warrior monks – rejecting personal comforts and vices in favor of an ascetic study of our field of expertise. Further, since we are, indeed, warriors, we must train our bodies and minds to accept deprivation. In that spirit, along with giving up beer, we have discarded mattresses, sheets and pillows in order to sleep on the ground outside the barracks. We have also taken to pouring sand and insects onto our food before eating it.

It appears that Those Who Know Best have decreed that we shall spend another week in the classroom getting made smarter. I can only hope it’s as illuminating as this first one has been.

(admin note - yes, I retro-posted this for ease of organization)

^%%$%^ Army computers

I had a nice little post for y'all, even though the wireless is down and I'm using an Army computer.

Then Blogger took a giant crap on me.

[sigh]

So, no thoughtful little post. However, when I can get up and running again on my own computer, I do have a groundhog picture to share.

But the interesting part...

aside from the woodchucks and the sparrows, and the incredible evil of the no-beer rule, there is a nifty side to this class I'm taking.

I spend all day sitting in the world's most dull TRADOC-required classes. I taught four hours on the fine details of writing orders yesterday (just in case any of my fellow mid-level NCOs ever find themselves running a Division G3), and suffered through 4 hours this morning focused entirely on Annex Q to the Operation Order - the Civil Military Operations Annex.

Obviously, this sucks. But our instructors aren't real interested in the classes, either, as long as they fill the time required. And so every PowerPoint slide is the jumping off point for whichever of us is treaching the class to ask, "So, who has experience with [whatever] while you were deployed?"

And that's where it gets good. Because in our 16-soldier class, we have one soldier who hasn't deployed. We have people who've worked Civil Affairs in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and a couple who've been to both. We have people who've worked at Echelons Above Reason, and many people who've worked in the dirt. We have people who did the Iraqi invasion, and people who've worked the State Department at Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

It's a lot of experience, it's significantly more current than anything in our texts, and it's directly related to what all of us will be doing at some point again.

Best of all, the nature of our work being what it is, the discussions enable us to pool our knowledge and dream new ways to "slap the Good Idea Fairy out of the air." That is, tactics, techniques and procedures for managing enthusiastic, ambitious and idealistic officers. This is vital to NCO education, and probably is enough to make this tiresome outing worthwhile.

Just when it was staring to get really miserable...

the weather up here finally broke and it's not 1,000 degrees with 98% humidity. I find ol' Court Licks much more enjoyable when I'm not squinting through a sheet of sweat.

I mentioned the bird's nest in the bathroom to y'all, right? It's occupied (I can hear the little sparrows), but I can't get a good view from the outside (yes - I leaned waaaay out the window to look - nearly becoming one of those "weird military deaths" statistics).

But I wouldn't want you to think I was pulling your leg, so here's a crummy shot of the portion of the nest that protrudes into the shower entrance.



It could be evidence of the Army's horrifying lack of interest in our living conditions, but I prefer to think of it as a cheerful and rustic touch.

More Army Fun

Greetings from lovely Court Licks, Eastern Seaboard!

The official mascot of Court Licks appears to be the giant fat woodchuck, of which I have seen no fewer than 14 examples in the space of about 24 hours. The Mister retained possesion of the digital camera, so don't get your hopes for exciting woodchuck imagery, but if one wanders close enough, perhaps I'll take a cell pic.

This particular class I'm enrolled in is focused on my job, so thus far it isn't too painful. The blanket no-beer rule, however, sucks the big one. Guess you can't win 'em all - if you get (mildly) useful content, you apparently don't get quality military recreation.

However, it seems the internet is not a physical impossibility, although it is a bit of a trudge. It does require operating off of battery power, which means I will soon have to brave the woodchuck-infested hike back to the barracks.

[sigh]

I love this job.

Check this out!

I wish I could claim credit for this guy, but ran across a link over at Blackfive today. In case any of you didn't catch it, you need to trot over and check out Daniel's Big Trip.

His blog is all on one page, so I recommend you get a cup of coffee and start at the bottom. Here's a "mission statement" type blurb from his first post:

I've decided that since I gave 11.5 years of my life to this country, and even lost body parts fighting for it, I want to SEE it, and the people who live in it. My plan is to drive basically a big circle around the USA from TN to Maine, then Oregon, down Cali and off to Key West. I have a beat up 1984 Suburban I've been preparing for the trip, and my plan is to live in it, along with my mildly retarded Boxer. I hope to see a lot of sites, stay off the interstates, and meet a lot of interesting people along the way…

The coolest thing about this gentleman and his blog is that although he got hurt pretty badly, and the wounds have obviously changed the course of his life, you will find that you are not reading a pity blog. After about two posts, I was so caught up in the Suburban, the trip and the boxer that I was in far more danger of spitting coffee all over my keyboard and shorting it out in a fit of laughter than I was of choking up.

It's very good. And the boxer? The boxer is adorable.

Blaaaah

I have to take off tomorrow and do another Army thing. This one will be a location that sounds like...Tort Licks.

I'm trying to pack, but wow - am I ever lacking in enthusiasm for the process. I've been at it a while, and my progress is less than stellar.



Yeah, that's two pairs of underwear and a hat.

I'm actually pretty thrilled to have gotten a seat in the class I'm attending, and it shouldn't be anywhere near as awful as the last one. But wow - I do not want to make piles of stuff, check that stuff off a list, then cram that stuff into bags.

Alright. The time has come to stop whining. I'm off to pack!

It's not ALL fun and games

when Dad has a prior engagement and Abby is in charge of dinner for the team.



They picked in reverse-seniority order, so we'll see how this goes. If nothing else, it should be educational. Or at least, funny.

Corrupting the youth!

Yep! That's me. Number Two Son and I packed up an armload-o-rifles and headed off to the range.

First, we set him up on my uber-tacticool Plainfield carbine.



The red dot scope seemed to work out pretty well for him.



Two out, three right in there. He was pleased, and thus, so was I.

Being a good adult, I did manage to let him shoot first before breaking out the new (old) carbine.



I know, I know. The sling is in the mail, since the one I had on hand is on the Inland. Obviously, I found the trigger spring.



A little high at 50, but I was pleased with the grouping, and the rifle ran like a clock. I am a very happy camper.

And, finally, one more. Because I am just so darn proud.



That is the young man, adjusting his firing position with my AR. And yes - that is his finger - straight and off the trigger.

Random news roundup!

First off, in the way of Things That Are Bad But Are Really Good News, we have: Surgeons: Man's 'Tumor' Turned Out to Be 25-Year-Old Towel

Surgeons in Japan thought they were removing a tumor from a 49-year-old man who was suffering from abdominal pain in late May.

Instead, they found a 25-year-old surgical towel that had crumpled into what looked like a softball-shaped tumor, Agence France-Presse reported.

Well, nobody likes to find out they've had a towel in their guts for 25 years, but if you're having a tumor removed, I think the relief would be almost enough to force the thought of a lawsuit out of your mind.

And in Big Brother Is Watching news, we have: Researchers Secretly Tracked 100,000 Cell Users Outside U.S. for Six Months

Researchers used cell-phone towers to track individuals' locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months.

In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week's time period.

The study was based on cell phone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed.

I guess the moral of the story here is, if you're headed toward the Mexican border with all possible speed and The Man on your tail...pull that little card out of the back of your phone, or, better yet, yank the battery out and chuck the whole thing into a ditch.

And, finally, in Why Paying Attention in Science Class is Important news, we have: Thieves take Jesus statue from church cross

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- Thieves who stole an 8-foot statue of Jesus Christ off a crucifix in Detroit may have been seeking copper to sell as scrap. Problem is, it's made of plaster.

The Rev. Barry Randolph said Wednesday that the statue at the Church of the Messiah is green and looks like copper...

[sigh]

Let's hear it for Michigan's public schools, hey?

Huh.

So Sen. Obama has clinched the nomination.

Which tells us all about our choices in November.

I have to admit, from a strictly chick perspective, I'm annoyed to see Sen. Clinton lose to someone I think might be a lightweight.

(Seriously - I recognize that a lot of my readers are probably older white protestant dudes who dig guns, but for a second, try to put yourself in my shoes)

I only wish that our first viable female candidate had been someone I was more politically aligned with.

And I have to wonder - and there's no way to know until the dust settles in November - if the Democrats overplayed the equality hand and made a bad choice.

I heard the talking heads yap earlier about how Senators McCain and Obama are at odds on nearly every issue, from health care to immigration to Iraq. They remarked that this election will really be between two very different directions for this country. I wonder which of the two we will choose.

We all know where we stand, but I think curiosity about where everyone else stands is very natural. I think this election may allow us to see some of that.

Stepmom of the year

Since we have 14 year old boys here, we have throwing stars. And throwing knives. All the good stuff. Trouble is, they throw these things at the fence. Fences being made of wood, and the boys not quite being ninjas, the knives and throwing stars bounce back.

This, it seemed to me, was a laceration waiting to happen. A laceration that would, without a doubt, be timed so as to interfere with either my obsessive watching of CNN, my beer drinking, or both.

And that cannot be allowed to happen.

So Girl Child and I went to the range and shot up half of the .22lr in north Texas. We also purchased a couple of extra targets. Then we stopped at Home Despot and picked up some foam board, which we proceeded to hack apart in the parking lot so it would fit in El Jeepo.

Brought it home, added some thumbtacks, and...voila!



Number Two Son discovers that these throwing stars work much better when throw them at something they'll stick in.

(A note - the monikers "Number One Son" and "Number Two Son" infer no preference or order of merit. It's a seniority issue. Number One Son is eight minutes older than Number Two.)

Note to self:

That little spring in the back of the trigger housing on my M1 carbine? (consults book - that would be the trigger spring) It does come out. But when it comes out, it comes out with a sense of urgency.

[sigh]

Now I have to crawl around the armory/library looking for one of the few small carbine parts for which there is no "spare" in my toolbox.

[grumble grumble]

This would be easier if my "gun futzing" area didn't look like a junkyard for old military weapons parts. I have the other M1 carbine in larger pieces so I can compare, and I was swapping springs and stuff on 1911s yesterday, so the whole space is littered with springs, nasty q-tips, and befouled pipe cleaners.

The last full measure of devotion (updates below)

The President just, in a short ceremony, presented the Medal of Honor to the parents of a fallen soldier.

SPC Ross McGinnis laid it all down 4 Dec 06, when he threw himself on a grenade in a Humvee in Baghdad.

He was a Private First Class then, and 19 years old. There are four men alive today because of the choice one young soldier made, in a split second that probably stretched forever.

It seems, from the news article, that McGinnis was not cut out to be a student. He struggled in school, within walls, behind a desk. But in the end, he found a place where he belonged. His father saw it.

“He was more reserved and more confident and seemed to stand a lot taller, although he didn’t grow any while he was in the Army,” his father said. “He was a man. Unfortunately, we never really got to know him as a man. He was a child when he left, he got to visit with us a couple times, then he was gone.”

I cannot imagine the courage, devotion and outright love it took for that young man, in that second that lasts forever, to decide to lay down all the years, days and moments that he had left, so that the other men in the vehicle could have all of their remaining years, days and moments. Trying put oneself into McGinnis' boots at that second makes one feel very small. And very, very thankful.

I know, in a the detached way that we all know these things, that his parents are crushed. I'm certain they are proud, but all the pride in the world can't make up for an empty seat at the table on Thanksgiving. But at the very moments his family looks at the empty table every years and the grief threatens to pull them under, I hope they look at the Medal on the mantel and realize that somewhere, there are four other families who look at a man at their table, and whose gratitude is the only thing in the world equal to the grief of the McGinnis family.



Men do not fight for flag or country, for...glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another.
-William Manchester, Goodbye Darkness

Child to the rescue!

We had a little emergency tonight. Yes - 'twas a toad.

Those of you who've been around for a while might remember last year's toad fiasco. The toads have returned.

I shoved the dogs in the house and relocated one last week. In thanks for my efforts, it peed on me. Toads, if you're not aware, can pee a lot.

So when I found one lurking outside tonight, I shoved the dogs inside and began complaining about the toad. At which point, I realized how useful it can be to have 14 year-old boys around.

Number One Son volunteered to move the toad to the front yard.



How fabulously useful is that?

Happy Dance!

Let's get this out of the way right up front - that whole FedEx delivery guaranteed by 1030 line is bull. The Big White Truck of Happiness showed up around 1130. But...whatever.

I had to put it in a chair and look at it for a moment.



Fortunately, there are kids here who bring a little normalcy to the house - otherwise I'd probably still be gazing at the box. "C'Mon, Abby," they said. "Stop being weird and open it."



The first thing we must do is look past the godawful M2 birch stock. There's a reason I keep spare M1 stocks in the garage, and this is it. So let's look more closely at the rifle itself, shall we?



That's gorgeous. The barrel is an Underwood 11-43, which seems to make it possible it's the original. The bore is bright and clean, the moving parts show almost zero wear. Although the dates make it likely the rifle saw considerable service, it looks like it may have skated through its time in US service, and in Italy's being assigned as the weapon of someone who didn't go outside.

And getting an office-dweller's weapon, if you ask me, is awesome.

I slapped some BLO on my extra M1 stock and put it all together. I will tear the bolt apart and clean it up (it's the only really grungy looking bit), and we should be good to go for some range time this week.

So. Here we are.

The Mister braved the fury that is Cranky Sleeping Abby and prodded me awake around 0640 (with an old fishing rod, from a safe distance, while crouching behind a dresser).

FedEx hasn't yet seemed to screw up my carbine's progress - at least not so that I can tell from the tracking info.

I have coffee, CNN, and I am officially waiting.

I am supported in this effort by Casey, who's sacked out on the floor next to me. Sparky and Jack are nowhere to be found, and I suspect - scratch that - I have confirmed - that they are racked out with children.

To my amusment, Sparky is curled up with Girl Child on the big bed. The boys share a room, in which they each have a little bed. Jack is, of course, stretched out on one of those.

Nice weekend

With lots of pool time, a little yard work, etc etc.

I tried to go to bed last night, only to discover this on my pillow:



[sigh] The stench isn't the worst part. The worst part is the indignant looks I'm subjected to for snapping a picture and disturbing his sleep.



And, yes. He stayed in the same spot all night long.

"Why are you laying on me," asked Mr. Abby?

Yorkie, I replied.

He nodded, scooted over, and the two of us divided the share of the bed that wasn't occupied by eight pounds of cranky little dog.

Yipee!

Look what's coming to Bad Dog Central!!!



(that'd be the M1 carbine)

Monday, by 1030. I think perhaps I shall get up with the Mister and sit in a lawn chair in the front yard, drinking coffee and waiting on the Big White Truck of Joy.

I say again...

I knew this town was evil when I was there.

BAGHDAD – Coalition forces captured a key suspected Special Groups financier May 28 in Mahmudiyah, about 15 km south of Baghdad.

Intelligence sources led Coalition forces to the residence of the individual believed to be a key Special Groups financier. He is suspected to be the primary financier between Iranian intelligence elements and Special Groups criminals in Mahmudiyah and southern Baghdad and was reportedly distributing funds to weapons smugglers supplying criminals in those areas.

Every so often some little piece of info will trickle out that makes me really happy to have gotten out of there in one piece.

I do remember a few good guys down there - hopefully a few will still be around once all the rats have been rooted out. The region from Mahmudiyah west to the Euphrates is the last thing you'd expect to see in Iraq - green and fertile farmland. It would be nice to see that producing for the whole of Iraq, and not merely serving as tall grass for evil bastards to lurk in.

Hovering ain't natural

and that has bene proved yet again by a helicopter crash on a hospital roof.

Fortunately, it appears from local news reports that there were no deaths, and only minor injuries for the two folks onboard during the training evolution.

I love a good helicopter ride, but they do seem a little bit complicated and prone to fall out of the sky.

This caught my eye because it was in downtown Grand Rapids. Fortunately, not at the hospital where Mom works in the emergency room, however.

Her hospital is getting the overflow. Heh. She's got a couple of days off, so I know one ER nurse who is most likely not answering her phone today.

WTF is THIS???

Calling all my people out there who might know anything about Texas lawn pestilence! I noticed this...weird crap this morning.



I fear a fungus. It looks like...ash or something similar. And there are several spots of it around the front. Just the front, of course. Not the back or the sides where we have some sort of "undesirable" (but much more hardy) grass.



Any ideas out there? What might it be? What will it do? Should I just treat the entire front lawn with diesel fuel now, burn it to the dirt and lay down astroturf?

Cheese for morons

I loves me some cheese, so I picked up a package of pre-sliced swiss at the store the other day.



This was pretty good cheese. Nice flavor, nice texture. A great sitting-around-munching-on-cheese choice. I was doing just that when I flipped the package over and perused the text on the back.

At which point I realized that apparently, some people need serious instructions to execute even the simplest tasks. Check this out, for those of us who cannot figure out how to open a package of cheese...



I was going to comment on the number of non-english speakers who might still struggle through this process, due to the one-language instructions, but then I realized that even folks who speak strange sub-Saharan dialects could probably work from the pictures.

It was nice to know that the good folks at Kroger are committed to helping even the very confused access cheese. But what about post-access? What if you used the pictures, got the cheese open, ate some, and then became confused?

What of this extra cheese, you might wonder?

Relax. Kroger got you covered, with a little block of helpful text I like to call "concept of bag."



I think that's readable, but if it's not, here you go:

This recloseale package is a convenient way to store unused cheese. For best quality keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 5 days after opening.

This is good info, because I cannot count the times I have dumped unused cheese into the dryer, left it there for a week, then been disappointed in the quality when I wanted to finish it off.

Plotting...

For the week ahead. If I was a better adult, I'd have this figured out so that the kids did all the housework while I hung out at the range. In fact, a couple of years ago, I could have gotten away with that. Now, though, they're smarter, and they'll probably catch me sneaking out the door with my Black Bag O' Joy.

Hmmm....

In other news, we have business days again, so I'm back to constantly checking to see if the CMP rifle has shipped.

Memorial Day

We'll be cooking out in the backyard with the kids and the dogs. I hope all of you are doing something similar.

This day is about the ones who didn't make it back, but it has always seemed to me that they wouldn't begrudge us spending it enjoying our friends and family.

But do think of them. Remember them.

MAJ Gregory J. Fester
SPC Michael J. Stokely
SGT Paul A. Saylor
SPC Joshua P. Dingler
SGT Thomas J. Strickland
SFC Class Lawrence E. Morrison
SSG George R. Draughn Jr.
SFC Robert L. Hollar Jr.
SSG Jason A. Fegler
SPC Joshua J. Munger
SPC Benjamin A. Smith
SGT Regina C. Reali
SPC Cheyenne C. Willey
1LT Benjamin T. Britt
SPC William Lopez-Feliciano
SGT Kenith Casica
SSG Travis L. Nelson
SGT Matthew D. Hunter
1LT Garrison C. Avery
SPC Marlon A. Bustamante
SPC Anthony C. Owens
PFC Caesar S. Viglienzone
SPC Andrew K. Waits
CPT Shane R. Mahaffee
1SG Carlos N. Saenz
SPC Teodoro Torres
SGT Nathan J. Vacho

What do we have HERE?

The Mister is off at the airport, trying to find his children who, it appears, were diverted to some other city in Texas when their plane developed some sort of issue.

You know, about seven years ago we had them, and they were scheduled to fly home on Sept 11. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Their luck with flights hasn't improved much.

Anyway. I trudged out to get the mail.

Standing in front of the mailbox, I conducted inventory. Box from World's Coolest Grandmother - yipee! Little package with a used paperback I ordered online - woohoo! Flyer from gas company.... Hey...what's this?

STATE OF TEXAS
COUNTY OF TARRANT
Jury Summons

For me!

I mailed in my voter registration like ten days ago, and do not yet in fact have a voter registration card. They don't waste much time.

But I am all excited. I've never had jury duty. I love things I've never done before.

It's next month, and there's about a 50/50 chance the Army will have me somewhere doing something, but I'd like to go do the jury gig. I think I would be a fabulous juror.

Countdown to

a full house. The kids will arrive for the summer this evening. There will be dogs on beds, much pool-related activity, and generally a much higher optempo around here.

The boys are going on 15, and so I am mostly concerned about the food issue. I was never a teenage boy myself, but I have known a few. I predict we have less than a week before they may attempt to eat the furniture.

Preparations have been made. There's enough peanut butter in the pantry to float a battleship, we've been buying pasta like the Old Country Buffet in preparation for Italian Night, and we have cases and cases of Ramen noodles.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go make some "please don't eat the dog" signs for the pets to wear.

Range trip!

I took Barney's advice from the last set of comments and took off to the rifle range in order to be doing something other than sniveling about the CMP.

Up front, it would have been a more productive range trip if, in addition to the Inland carbine and 100 rounds of ammo for it, I had remembered magazines.

It turned into a wringout trip for the .308 that came to live here recently. Does this look like a good time or what?



The first group of shots (at 50 yards) was...well, it could have been worse. It took a couple of figure out the whole bipod thing, and several more to be sure I was shooting where I was shooting, then an adjustment right and up, then a few more...



I am a terrible "adjuster." I could singlehandedly use an entire ASP zeroing a single M16, making sight adjustments one click at a time. So after I pulled the above target down, I'd totalled 6 UP and 4 RIGHT. So I took a deep breath, cringed, and added another 4 UP.



Which worked. Cool. Having by this point become buddies with the range officer (another recovering Marine), I trudged over to the 100 yard line to see where I was.



'Twas good.

DISCLAIMER - That is NOT a photo of the target! I didn't want to call a cold range after three shots so I could go get it, so there IS no picture! This is an "artist's rendering" of said target, made crudely from the image from the 50! The flyer was the first shot at that distance, and the other two were nice.

150 grain Federal softpoints of one sort or another. I was pleased. I still don't really see the point of the bipod, but it doesn't offend me, so I don't see any need to take it off right away.

Kudos to the guys down at Alpine, who were helpful and non-irritating all the way around. Props to the friendly dude inside who boresighted my scope, and the nice old boy running the range. But maybe you guys should stock a couple of M1 carbine magazines...

Since that was so much fun and the Mister is out of town, it occurs to me I have a ton of .45 acp and couple of pistols to match.... I'm off again!

Staying busy

and trying not to click on the CMP e-store too often.

Today, I was getting desperate. So...what is our fearless author up to?



Other than pulling sticks out of the undercarriage (left over from the trip up north), that is?



That's right - changing my oil! All by myself! Because I am an uber-liberated post-feminist total badass self-sufficient not-needing-any-help type of gal!

(okay - so the Mister was an arm's length away reminding me which nut needed to come out, and the proper order of steps. But I think I'll remember well enough to do it all alone next time)

Beats housework

Jack finally pointed out that I was being absolutely NO FUN. So we got the floating duck and headed outside.

Yipee! Floating ducks call for belly flops!



I cannot get over how well that dog swims. Like an otter, but only if otters made weird chuffing noises to keep the water out of their nostrils.



We did ten or so duck retrieves, then I killed fun when I insisted on securing the duck and getting in the water myself. Oh well - he got over it, and is now joyfully rolling on the floor and growling - his favorite way of recovering from a swim.

[sigh]

The CMP people are tormenting me. My S'G' order went to open/processing on the 15th, and it looks kinda like it'ss running about three business days before they are shipping.

[taps fingers]

Any time now...

Oddly, clicking on the "pending orders" button 37 times per hour doesn't seem to be speeding the process along at all.

Mundane

and, at the same time, pathetic. In the wake of a very nice weekend, I thought it probably wouldn't kill me to clean up around the house today.

Since we have a G. Shepherd, there are always doghair tumbleweeds rolling across the horizon here at BDC. Our last decent vacuum gave up the ghost a few months back, so we had a trainwreck fling with a Bissell FlipIt (which may work well for something, but sure didn't for anything we tried with it).



After that, we gave up on the fancy-schmancy floor-sucking machines and decided to combat the dog hair Redneck-style.



A-yup. That's right. We clean the house with an off-brand ShopVac. It's the cat's ass on the tile. The only drawback is the short cord.

So today I whack the kitchen, the master bath, and most of the floor. Also several loads of laundry and dishes. I am totally a domestic goddess.

Wow.

Weather.com says it's 100 degrees out right now. So does my thermometer, but I don't trust it.

Which explains why the slightly-over-two-miles I jogged this afternoon very nearly killed me. But character was built.

In other exercises in character-building, the Mister is spending his day walking around in the sunshine, smiling and shaking hands. Wearing the shockingly uncomfy Dress Blue Deltas with the equally awful Shiny Black Shoes. Poor guy.

And THAT is why

I am not a good biker wife.

Good lord, that perching on the back is uncomfortable. North Texas was very pretty, but I feel like I've been scrunched in a laundry basket for the last six hours.

I also find the sportbike thing pretty much terrifying. It requires every bit of trust I have in my husband's ability for me to not have him pull over so I can walk home. Too fast, too curvy, too scary for me.

But, because he is more or less a saint, the Mister did not seize the opportunity to launch off the back of the bike and speed away.

In an ongoing effort

to be a decent wife, I'm participating in the "couples ride" the Mister's motorcycle group is doing. Not as a rider - as a passenger. Nonetheless, wish me luck, and please try to avoid hitting any bikes you may see in North Texas this morning.

Man...

Write one quick entry on how you don't feel too bad about an American soldier shooting up the Quran, and next thing you know, CNN has 8 zillion people visiting your blog.

I'm not editing or deleting any comments (other than my own, for typos), since that's not the point of the medium.

If, at some point, we want to talk about this in more depth, we can. But that's probably best saved for when I haven't been having beers at the VFW.

Oh, the shame

This sort of thing just tears me up.

No, really. I'm weeping here. Weeping.

The U.S. military on Saturday formally apologized to an Iraqi village after
a soldier admitted using the Quran -- Islam's holy book -- for target
practice.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, apologized
to the Radhwaniya tribe for the staff sergeant, who was a sniper section leader
assigned to the headquarters of the 64th Armored Regiment.

Now, really. I am fully aware of all the many reasons why this sort of behavior is bad and wrong and offensive and counterproductive and tacky and evil.

But really. It all gets back to the one thing the entire West would like the Middle East to understand - the need to chill the Hell out.

Win one, lose one

The lawn got mowed. However, it was a really nice day. A little warm, sunny... And so it didn't occur to me that running, then mowing the back, side and front yards in a tank top was maybe not a smart idea.

Seriously, sometimes it's a miracles I made it to adulthood being this slow.

The sunburn on the face and arms will fade, but the part on my shoulders and the other flesh that hasn't seen direct sunlight in months....well, I'm thinking blisters.

Avoidance

Ugh. There's our back yard. The one that, right before we took off up north, the Mister said he should maybe mow. And which I, in a hurry, said, "will be fine if I deal with it when I get back."

It looks like...well, I've seen jungles with less foliage.



I have a lawnmower and a can of gas, and just as soon as the dew burns off, it'll off with a couple of inches!

That is, if I can't think of anything at all to do that will enable me to keep procrastinating with it...

UPDATE @ 1253 -- There was no avoiding it. I tried - Jack and I even went for a three-mile run, but the persisted in...exisiting. I'm halfway though the back, and this seemed an appropriate time to stop for root beer.

Kindergarten debate

"The word...a bad word that we can't repeat on television..."

Wolf Blitzer snivels about Sen. Joe Biden's evaluation of the President's description of "some Democrats" as appeasers. Time for definition!

tr.v. ap·peased, ap·peas·ing, ap·peas·es
1. To bring peace, quiet, or calm to; soothe.
2. To satisfy or relieve: appease one's thirst.
3. To pacify or attempt to pacify (an enemy) by granting concessions, often at the expense of principle. See Synonyms at pacify.

Well, the shoe either fits, or it doesn't. But the response to the President's remarks is interesting.

If I were to refer to someone in a generally insulting manner, perhaps by using the term coward, it would seem to me there would be only a few basic options for response.

1 - punch me in the face (not really an option in modern politics)
2 - respond, "I am not a coward."
3 - publicly shriek that my accusation is somehow not appropriate, or is insufficiently high-minded

If I call someone a coward, a combination of 1 and 2 would indicate that they believe my description to be inaccurate. Number 3 does not, it would seem, dispute the accuracy of my accusation, merely that it was not nice.

I say again, I cannot stand any of these people.

well, lookee here...

I logged into the CMP E-store this morning to see...well, if anything had appeared.



So I peed myself a little, then checked out the details. It's a service grade Saginaw S' G' (Grand Rapids). No idea on shipping yet, but I'm checking. Regularly. Like every 10 minutes.

Things I have learned

1 - The jeep can go through anything. Including trees.



In fact, one can proceed directly through those trees twice. Once heading out, and once heading back.

2 - Proceeding through those trees at a high rate of speed in the pitch black will leave a mark on said jeep.



The frame damage is...not a big deal. A little paint to cover the exposed metal, and I'll write it off as a mark of character. Kinda like a good scar. The problem is not visible in the picture, because it took a little while for the crack to spread. But spread it did, and by the time we hit Texas, there was 100 mph tape on the windshield and we were cringing at every large insect we encountered.

3 - Our insurance provider claims that the wonderful glass coverage we had in Florida did not transfer to Texas. [sigh]

Out of the north

Made it home last night - I don't have anywhere to go for a while now, and I have to admit, it's a nice feeling.

We were pursuing the elusive morel mushroom in the "northern lower" of Michigan. It wasn't a particularly good year for them, but we did alright.



There are lots of things you can do with morels, but when up north, we go with the traditional fry-em-in-a-big-pan approach.



Those are accompanied by a large pan of bluegill fillets, and together they form possibly the world's perfect meal. The blackflies that occasionally end up in the pan add a little something.

I haven't made it to the spring mushroom gathering since 96 - shortly before I graduated high school and hit the road. It was good to be back.

It's been a rough few days

of chasing fungus around northern Michigan. Updates will follow later tonight or tomorrow, but suffice it to say there were blackflies, beers and yes - fungus.

I still don't get it

I've been watching the primary returns for a few hours now. Well, except for about an hour after supper when I was asleep with an attractive man and a yorkie on the couch. But I don't believe I missed much.

I'm not really understanding where this process is heading. It looks, whenever the numbers are broken down by county and occupation and income level, etc, that Sen. Obama is winning hardcore democrats and black folks, and Sen. Clinton is winning centrist democrats and older people.

This runs me straight into what's always been my problem with the primary system - the people picking the party's nominee are the sort of people who bother to register with a party affiliation. And they may end up picking a candidate who best represents the textbook party values, but I don't know they end up picking a candidate most appealing to the entire electorate. And ultimately, that is the point.

So it looks to me like the democrats are on their way to nominating Sen. Obama, but I can really see the other argument - that he's not winning in the places and ways that the democratic candidate will have to win in November to carry the general election.

As I've said before, I'm inclined to like Sen. McCain, and so this is academic right now. I'm also apparently immune to the Obama magic, so I really don't get the wild-eyed college students. It simply seems to me that we're letting a weird primary system enable fuzzy idealists to nominate someone who has no business vying to head our government, and who is not going to do well this fall.

Stormy mornings are the best

Rain and thunder makes a nice backdrop for staying in bed extra-long, enjoying that "I'm not really awake" feeling.

However, all three dogs are nervous and Sparky has developed the phenomenally irritating habit of barking at thunder.

I really don't want to do anything, but alas, that's not an option today. Primary returns to watch on the TV tonight, so that gives me something to look forward to. Add beer, and televised politics are almost as much fun as a good baseball game.

Housekeeping, etc

Tonight, for y'all, I've got a couple of neat blogs that commentor Peggy has pointed out to me (she runs a good site herself, by-the-by).

First we have two of our favorite things, Marines and dogs, all wrapped up in wonderful package over at K9 Pride. This, folks, is a really neat site and some good insight into the world of the military working dog and its person. Drop by and encourage (now recovering from the Corps) Sgt. Dowling to keep up the good work.

Peggy also pointed us toward Lt. Nixon's Rants. That would be the real officer sort of lieutenant (Navy O3), not the laughable butter bar sort. The LT is one of those Squids in da Sandbox, and he's putting out some throughtful copy during his tour. Drop by and check him out.

We also have The Lonestar Gal, who, for some odd reason, seems to be really looking forward to moving to Texas. Well, actually, she's coming from Ohio, so she's going to moving up in the world. Anyway, she's a thoughtful one, and the recent posts on the story of her life are not to be missed.

As always, I shall continue to wander through comments and try to share neat sites with you.

Begging off

I've got some cool blogs to point out that I've been clued into over the last couple of weeks, and some other admin type stuff.

However, I'm just flat wore the heck out tonight, and so I'm going to beg some indulgence and try to get that stuff taken care of tomorrow. I am playing Army for a couple more days, but it's normal-hours administrative stuff, so I'm actually going to get to sleep well past 0530 and get home at a decent time.

The highlight of the day? A toss-up between serving as NCOIC of Cake and doing body-fat tapings. I think the cake thing would make a great efficiency report bullet.

It's not just a job,

it's a job that is amazing at screwing up my weekends.

When a battalion-wide, nobody-leaves-till-everyone-pees piss test was annouced shortly after 1800, it was not a cheerful moment. I got home only moments ago.

Worst part was, the hour or so spent waiting on the few people who were having some sort of issue with producing the appropriate amount of urine. Made me want to rip their kidneys from their bodies and wring out the required 30ml.

And in other thrilling news...

When I fired up my email here at the airport (let's hear it for the Columbia, SC airport and its free wireless!), guess what showed up in my inbox?

We have received and verified your recent order. There is nothing that we will be able to tell you about the order until we have input all orders received ahead of yours into the system. Your order will now advance to our sales area and from there to our shipping area. Please note, that unless otherwise listed, our order to ship time is 30 days. You will receive other emails as the order progresses

.
From my buddies at the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

[insert Happy Dance here]

Now, the only thing is, until they process my order and I see some details, I don't know which carbine I got. There were only 540 Saginaw S'G' service grades available, so I asked for one of those or a Saginaw S'G rack grade or a Saginaw service grade. Any would make me happy, but I am curious.

Just so long as I was clear and only end up with one. Funding one carbine is tolerated, but funding three might mean I'd have to sleep in the back yard.

FREEEEDOM!!!!

With one final, drawn-out, tiresome ceremony, my class ended this morning. Of course, yesterday night being the last night at a military class, many cheap beers were consumed.

The only thing more irritating than sitting through a drawn-out tiresome ceremony is doing it hungover. Ugh. You think we'd all learn that, but it seems to be one of those lessons that doesn't take.

Now I'm sitting back at the airport waiting on the flight home. It's a drill weekend, so I don't get to toss the boots into the closet quite yet, but I am looking forward to not sharing a bathroom with strangers again for a while.

Three days more

til Revolution, we shall nip it in the bud...

Sorry, getting my Army crap mixed up with Les Miserables. Anyway, it's three days more, and then there won't be a revolution, but I will get to leave. Which will be nice, because this course is like one long bad joke.

Question: What is the effect of a nuclear blast on communications equipment?
Answer: Adverse

No - I don't really get it either. But for some reason, being here for two weeks is career-enhancing. Ugh.

The other thing I've learned is that some of us might think it was really simple if we had all our texts in .pdf format, and all the exams were open-book. Shockingly easy. But we'd be only partially right, because that assumption rests upon the stipulation that one can use the search function. Which assumes that one can spell.

We had one dude today who couldn't find the four "types" of something-or-other. Only after about five minutes did we realize that was because he was searching for "tipes."

Your tax dollars at work, folks.

BandAid, meet Sucking Chest Wound

Here's an odd one - Iraq: Bill proposed to ban toy guns

Iraqi lawmakers are working on a draft bill to ban importing toy guns and fireworks, hoping to curb increasingly aggressive behavior among children who have grown up amid real war, a lawmaker said Tuesday.

So, the good news is that these people are in every country.

The not-so-good news is that as of earlier this month, the Iraqi government is still struggling terribly to meet the benchmarks for government progress set forth as the "way forward" for their country.

But as long as they're progressing toward meaningless nannyism, perhaps they'll garner some more support from folks on the left in this country.

"The culture of violence has prevailed in our society and controlled the Iraqi family and that it has affected the culture of children," said Samira al-Moussawi, head of the parliamentary committee on children and women, which is preparing the legislation.

Good lord.

The bar is OPEN

I bolted out of class like a scalded cat. I ran three miles to ward off guilt, then schlepped the laptop over here. Check this out:



Yes, folks, this appears to be the last bar in the DoD where one can drink and smoke. And there's non-restricted internet. It's wonderful.

The class I'm in is not really worth comment, but it's over next week. So that's a plus.

In other happy news, the Mister swears he launched my paperwork to the CMP today second-day air (for guaranteed Monday delivery). So I cross my fingers and hope I get drawn for one of the Saginaw variants...

Yeah - that's going to be a few extra drills I'l have to dig up if I get picked, but still...

Still out here

I'm hanging out in a parking lot at my deep south training location. The all-ranks club here provides free wi-fi that is NOT restricted by the Army. However, the ranks club appears to be open three days a week. At least they left the wi-fi on.

The class is...well...about what you'd expect out of a professional education course for an Army that needs every warm body in uniform. Not real challenging.

Here's a sign outside the building we're in. It's for another class - fortunately, we are not being forced to tote rifles around, but they are. I apologize for the poor quality - it's a camera phone shot.



I really hope you can make out the bottommost word in quotes. If not, it's "LIVE." I am forced to wonder a little bit about any education system that requires folks to practice clearing weapons in a manner that's apparently inconsistent with how they'd clear them of live ammo.

Then again, the Army seems to routinely change its mind about the best way to clear an M4/M16, so there's always room for...interpretation? Or something?

There are some Navy folks here who are being...reprogrammed. Or whatever the term is for the training they give Sailors who are coming over to do Army work in Iraq. We don't have any real contact with them, but they don't seem overwhelmingly concerned or despondent, which I think is positive.

OK. I'm off to try to hunt down a cold beer before the exchange closes. Y'all take care. I'll be back to you reasonably soon (perhaps when they open the stupid club).

Some things never change

Including this one - I'm sitting outside a southern airport with a few guys with short hair and pile of green baggage, waiting on some promised "shuttle," smoking cigarettes and wondering if the shuttle would show up if I ran inside for coffee.

Who am I kidding? Of course it would.

Packing (again)

Well, it's been a really fabulous 44 hours at home, but there's a 0730 flight with my name all over it tomorrow.

[sigh]

I am off to another lovely vacation spot in the American South, this time for a bit of professional military NCO education. It will be, I am certain, absolutely fucking fascinating.

[puts on big girl panties, stops whining]

If it hasn't become obvious, I'm desperately trying to fufill the educational requirements for the next pay grade before...anything happens that might make going to schools impossible. KnowwhatImean?

It's a pretty short one, and at a far more civilized location than the past couple of outings have been. I truly, deeply and honestly believe that I'll be able to keep sharing my sunshine with y'all during this one.

Now, to finish up packing. I'm missing my Army Mandated Pre-Execution Checklist, which I completed at last drill and brought home and which is now...somewhere in this house, in one of the fifty gazillion manila folders we keep tucked in high places so Jack doesn't eat them.

I totally missed this

You all will have to forgive me for recycling old news. I was hanging out in Michigan a week ago when, it seems, Sen. Clinton was throwing a few back in a bar in Indiana.

I have got to admit, I got a kick out of that. Particularly when I asked the Mister, "did that actually happen?" and he replied, "Yep. And she looked like a pro."

...although Clinton is no stranger to late night drinks with the press and her staff, she usually prefers red wine or the trendy wheat ale Blue Moon with a slice of orange, not the watery light beer in the glass mug she waved in the air so proudly as the crowd chanted her name.

Now, of course, this is all part of Hillary's last-ditch attempt to connect as the "regular guy" Democrat. And I think it's pretty effective, particularly when contrasted with Senator Obama's pathetic record of public beer drinkin'.

...the Illinois senator mocked Clinton for taking a shot of whiskey in front of TV cameras. But it's not that Obama hasn't made attempts to connect with voters in a bar, as well — On a bus tour stop on March 28, Obama had a few sips of beer with [Penn. Senator Bob] Casey in front of the press. He did not finish the beer. Emphasis added

This campaign really is getting more entertaining by the day.

I now return you all to normal blogging, which is not based on week-old news.

Just an aside...

My guard dogs suck. I came home at 0410, opened the garage door, pulled in, got Jack and one bag out of the Jeep, shut the garage door, and opened to door to the house, while talking to the puppy.

Did I get barked at? No. I did not.

Were my legs ripped off by my G. Shepherd? No. They were not.

I was in the kitchen turning the light on before Sparky came blinking out of the bedroom. My fierce, wardog Marine husband? He finally woke up after I shook his knee for several seconds.

And Casey woke up when I turned the bathroom light on. She got petted, then promptly went back to sleep.

Although it's probably technically impossible to successfully invade Bad Dog Central, it seems you can do whatever you want here in the middle of the night as long as you don't drop any plates on the floor.

Look what followed me home

No. Not another dog. No way in Hell.

[shudders]

Anyway.



Cousin Randy won this, I think, at an NRA banquet or something. He goes to a lot of those. He doesn't need it, I might be able to use it, and so it came home with me, with only the vague instruction to see if I could find "something kinda like" my ProCarry to send up to him. Eventually. Someday. No hurry.

I guess that means I can keep it and send him a pistol, or trade it for a pistol for him, or sell it and buy him a pistol, or take no action for quite some time.

I think Randy mostly wanted to send me home with a rifle of the sort I'd told him I was seeking.

It's a Remington 700 in .308. The scope is a Nikon, and I have no idea what the heck the story is with the bipod. Front and rear irons are in a little baggie, along with some sort of green Remington locking safety doohicky. It hasn't been fired.

I was looking more for a .270, but there's not a thing in the world wrong with .308, and it is in fact what the Mister's open-country scoped rifle fires.

It's in the gun room, hanging out with its bipod extended. The Mister ought to be home soon (your tax dollars bailing out of work early!), and I think we'll stand around and scratch our heads and try to figure out its fate.

Home!

Depart Hastings, Michigan at 0840 Thursday, arrive Bad Dog Central at 0410 Friday. 1,234 miles in...20.5 hours.

Total cigarettes consumed...roughly 23 in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. Another 16 were needed to make it across Arkansas and partway across Texas.

Pushups done at rest stops in order to get blood flowing, roughly 80.

Powdered donuts vomited on the dog bed in the back of my Jeep - 3. But that wasn't until within 100 miles of home, so I just dragged Jack up front, told him it was OK, and put the pedal down.

I know driving that far in one swoop isn't ideal, but when I don't get tired until after the thousand-mile mark, there's no way I'm stopping.

It's nice to be home, and to have slept whatever there was of the night in my own bed, surrounded by the rest of my pack.

Everybody

likes motels.



Not only was he allowed on the bed (which never happens in normal life), but interstate motels are chock-full of neat smells.

I was a little intrigued by what might have caused him to sniff wildly at the edge of the bedspread, but I decided I didn't really want to think about it. Sometimes, I think we're all glad that our noses can't tell us as much as dogs' noses tell them.

Hanging out with the fam'

My first morning up here, I did Mandatory Breakfast with Gramma. Her routine involves a 0700 sharp appearance at the Big Boy restaurant in the next town over, and was mildly put out that my Dad insisted a 0800 departure.

Gramma is a Big Boy frequent flier - the other breakfast people all know her, and she has a "usual" order. She waited tables for about 100 years, and feels entirely free to offer helpful input to the breakfast waitresses. Although there is a "please wait to be seated" sign, she ignores it and heads directly to "her" table upon entry.

Yes, she is the Terror of Big Boy.

But it's a community, and she enjoys participating in it. She won a quilt in a cancer benefit raffle there a couple of years back (after her brush with esophogeal cancer), and paid that win back by knitting an afghan for their most recent raffle.

Gramma is a...brisk woman, and although I wasn't there when she donated the afghan, I can imagine her thumping it down on the counter and directing the nearest staff member, "You's can use this in your next cancer raffle," then heading out the door with absolutely no further discussion.

Small towns and their gathering places are wonderful because there's a place in them for every character, even the afghan-knitting Terror of Big Boy.

Holy crap!

I'm a smoker. I can count the number of times I've interacted with smokeless tobacco on hand and have several fingers left over.

However, if I had any confidence that this sign was anything but an odd arrangement of words, I'd buy stock in Copenhagen



I mean, c'mon. How cool would that be?

Sign courtesy of one of the fine gas stations of Wayland, Michigan.

What happens in northern Tennessee...

I'm 720 miles from home, rolling around in a motel bed with a handsome black guy. The downside, of course, is that he's neutered, has a tail, and requires frequent reminders that there's no ass-licking on the bed.

I'm well past the halfway point, which always makes me happy. I added about 50 miles to my trip by refusing to drive in either Oklahoma (which has been trying to kill me with its weather for about eight years now) or Illinois (because I don't think there's any way on earth to make my Jeep groovy with their firearms transport laws, and their gas is expensive).

I did the always-fun search for the rattiest available motel, and found one that didn't care if I wanted to bring a donkey into my room if I didn't mind paying the $5 pet fee.

Average mileage per gallon over the first 557.5 miles of travel was 17.17, which isn't bad considering I'm around 3000 rpm at 73 mph (my preferred speed of travel). I probably lost some off that average battling the wind on the last leg, but I won't have the numbers until I fill up in the morning. Unleaded regular ran me an average of $3.292/gallon, but two of the three fillups were in Arkansas, so that number is going nowhere but up.

It's late, and one of us has been pretty nervous, so he probably needs one more "out" before we call it a night.

Weather

I do not normally wake up for bad weather. But a band of storms came through last night that had me catapulting out of bed around 0330.

All is well here, but I did note one thing... I got up, peered out the windows, muttered "Holy shit...." Then I heard some sirens start up.

I was farily sure that meant something bad, but I figured it was possible they were sounding because it was
A - a severe thunderstorm warning
B - a tornado warning
C - a flash flood warning (there are several "low spots" in our immediate area)

Satellite TV is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine in heavy rain, so I hit a local news website to find out what the story was. That proved entirely useless, offering some random imagery of a band of heavy weather, and NO INFORMATION on warnings or watches.

Fortunately, weather.com is always there for me, and as soon as I entered my ZIP code, let me know that we were under just about every sort of warning one gets in Texas, tornado included.

Seeing as we don't have a basement and neither of us felt like hiding in the closet, I went back to bed and to sleep at that point. But it was nice to know. Cheers for weather.com, and a big boo-hiss to nbc51.

Incidentally, there was more heavy weather out there last night. I'm taking off on a road trip today, and the other end of the evil weather was in the county next to my destination.

Could be a fun drive.

Note to self:

The day after running an Army physical fitness test may not be the best day to get range time. Because it's awfully hard to hold a pistol at arm's length for any length of time when one has spaghetti arms as a result of pushups.

[sigh]

We're off for a couple days of fishing. The laptop is coming along in case there's internet access.

Woo-hoo!

27 days on orders for the Wart Yolk evolution, followed by a regular weekend drill. That's 29 days of early mornings and uniforms.

So this evening, I'm watching a Star Wars marathon with the Mister and catching up on some of the beer I haven't been drinking when I've needed to be present and coherent before sunrise.

Extra bonus for tonight - a quick shot of the infamous "Wire Moment," or, at least, the aftermath a few hours later. Not so bad, really.

Easy fixes

So there I was, driving to Wart Yolk. I was getting a very strange vibration out of the Jeep's bass.

I was not happy. The Jeep is not a quiet ride, and I like to drive with music I can hear. But I was getting a buzzy rattle. Or a rattly buzz. Something uncool.

I got home, pointed out to the Mister that I'd like him to take a look at the speaker. I have another, longer, road trip coming up, and if I needed to replace a speaker, I wanted to know.

"You probably blew it," he said.

I shrugged. I dunno. Couldn't remember cranking the volume real recently, but there are a lot of things I can't remember.

Last night he got around to it. We went out in the driveway and skipped around on the CD until we found something with some bass. He turned the volume up, cocked his head (kinda like Jack watching TV, now that I think about it). Listened. Turned around and gave me the Oh God My Wife Is Retarded look.

He reached down next to my seat, extracted a manila folder with eight or ten sheets of spare Army paperwork. Turned the volume way up.

No rattle. No buzz.

"You want to keep things from being, you, know, like pinned up against the speaker."

[sigh]

My hero.

Home

Is always a nice place to be. Particularly when the Mister has made fresh coffee and swept up the excess dog hair.

Life is good.

Ahh...civilization

I am out of the woods, and back in the relatively civilized "rear" area of Wart Yolk. My group has another day or so of turning crap in before we actually leave.

"Turning stuff in" is always excruciating, but we're progressing. I already had the single most painless vehicle washing experience of my military career, when we pulled into the washracks and found...a herd of privates with power washing equipment. How about that?

The internet access point shares a space with a fast food eatery, so it's packed. It is, however, not packed with my soldiers, which is kinda nice. I love soldiers, and the Army, but it doesn't take long before you beging to crave being not talked to. I had an especially talkative bunch this time. Two of the three were in capable of embracing silence. It got painful.

I shall probably return tomorrow. I have lots of things to catch up on, and the fast food is calling my name.

About the wire...

Ok,ok! About the wire. Sometimes, you need wire and do not have gloves. Hands heal. However, I will be adding a pair of heavy leather gloves to my bag in the future. My time in the woods here at Wart Yolk is nearing its end. Fortunate, because I need internet access, a cold beer and some not-Army companionship. Unfortunately, those things will most likely come in that order.

Things that make you say, "DUH!"

Because I am a slow learner, I yet again handled concertina wire without gloves. Ouch.

Too much fun

I did not forget my boots, and the trip down here was as much fun as a convoy of civilian vehicles traveling 62mph down the interstate can be. Ugh. It's embarassing to be passed by those houses being pulled behind semi's.

I had envisioned the internet to be easier to find, and Blogger to be harder to get to. Instead it's the opposite.

The training evolution we're participating in sounds pretty interesting, but it hasn't really hit full swing yet. I will give the Army some props - they are doing a tremendous amount of research to try to keep their training updated and relevent.

That said, I should probably bail out and return to the parking lot that is our unofficial company headquarters. Actually, it's the hood of one humvee. But we like it, and sit around drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and bullshitting while leaning up against it.

I love this stuff. I can't believe they pay me to do it.

Ready to go (again)

Hitting the road again tomorrow for more motivating training.

I don't think I'll be entirely off the map - I should be able to reach out and post a couple of times. We'll see. I may also look into testing some posting-with-the-aid-of-others options.

Tonight was packing. I love packing.



Yeah. That's the "at home" version of the gear layout. I don't know if I'm forgetting something major or if I'm just less inclined to tote along gear I know I won't use (e-tool? I am not dragging an e-tool around anymore), but it didn't seem like much stuff at all.

It packed up nicely, too.



There's room in all those bags, and, since I forgot shoes earlier this week, I am imagining all sorts of stuff I may have left out.

But the important stuff is there: helmet? check. armor and gear? check. cigarettes? check. shower shoes? check.

Everything else will work itself out.

Wow.

I have absolutely nothing to say today.

I could give you a recap of today's pre-training training with the Army, but it was pretty dull the first time, and believe you me, you are not interested.

I did manage to show up in PT gear, participate in PT, shower and partially change before I realized that although I had a complete Army Combat Uniform in my bag, my boots were tucked neatly under the end of my bed. At the house. Forty miles from the Reserve Center.

The only thing better than being the Daily Dumbass is being the Daily Dumbass who wears her slightly-rank PT uniform all day.

[sigh]

If we can't serve as a positive example, we can always serve as a warning.