greetings from ireland...

well, we're off. the most miserable flight ever. flying on military cargo planes is so much better. constant 110v power for the laptops or game systems, you can stretch out on the floor and sleep... the only problem is the noise. this charter flight bites. the seats are so tight and close together and the a/c isn't working right and it's just been miserable. that's okay though, we're finally underway and the sooner we get it started, the sooner we get it finished.

we've already gotten our beers. i'm walking an interesting line with some of my younger troops. some of the other senior nco's went drinking and racing and chasing with their younger guys and think i should've done it with mine. felt it'd be good for esprit de corps. and they're probably not wrong. but my guys don't have the maturity for it yet. they can't see me acting stupid one minute and then block that out and turn professional again the next morning. so they did their thing and me and my right hand man did ours. one of these kids is really an immature, spoiled little brat who i'm fighting at every turn. but i'm trying to reward and recognize the good to balance out the constant punishment of the bad. so he's underage in the states, but legal here, and he was surprised when i bought him a pint. hopefully it starts to sink in with him. but i imagine it's going to be an amazingly long year.

not sure when/where the next stop will be. hope everyone is doing well!

well, we've survived the "muic" (mobilization unit inprocessing center) experience. we've been poked and prodded by the medics, subjected to full days of powerpoint briefings, spent two weeks out at the mock base and now survived a couple days of pass time. guys have gone out and drank mass quantities of booze, been thrown out of strip clubs, eaten way too much unhealthy food, spent way too much money in gear shops and just generally been stupid. now we're all back, back in uniform, ready to go.



the last two times were significantly different. so many people hadn't deployed before that there was a nervousness in the air. this time so many of the old-timers are so nonchalant about things that even the guys who haven't been deployed are calm and not so worried, and hiding any problems or fears well. weird to see how low the energy level is. or what a different type of energy it is. there's still the normal locker-room mentality and joking going on. some of the really good nco's are quietly training their guys everyday. turning normal situations into a learning opportunity. there's just none of the anxiety that i've witnessed in the past.

it's beginning to look alot like christmas...

it seems like every year that i say "Oh my God, it's Christmas already!?! It doesn't feel like it at all!" but that's never been more true than this year. when we first got here i bought a printer/scanner from target. it never printed from the beginning. i finally got a chance to take it back and swap it out yesterday and it was amazing to see the stores crowded with holiday shoppers. that's going to be the odd part about having the couple days off. we'll go see movies and hit the targets and walmarts for those last minute items for our shaving kits or whatever, and we'll run head-on into all the holiday preparations.

alot of these guys don't want to think about Christmas because they're missing it with family. we're in north carolina. it's chilly, but it's definately NOT a white Christmas. we've been so busy, most of us can't tell you what day it is. personally, i'm not a scrooge, i've just forgotten all about it. it'll be interesting to see if the mood finally settles in.

one giant bruise...

we got out of the field night before last. by the time we got the trucks unpacked and all the sensitive items accounted for it was bedtime. amazingly enough we got to sleep late. i think i got seven hours of sleep, maybe eight. and we all woke up stiff and sore and achey the next morning. for some reason when we were waking up at 4:30 and only had cold showers and were in the rain and the wind we were fine. but the minute we got into hard buildings with hot showers and soft mattresses instead of cots all our aches and pains caught up with us. i don't know if it's a matter of always being tense or what.

i wasn't too bad. no real tenderness or pain. all the months of rucking and walking around with body armor on at home had me better prepared than alot of guys. but when i was stripping down for a shower and caught a glance of myself in the mirror i was amazed to see all the yellowed bruises all over my body. they were just running together in some spots.

we're getting a couple nights off here, that'll be nice. nothing really planned. i don't need anything much, i'm not dying to go drinking or to the strip clubs or anything. but it'll be nice to catch up on sleep.

hope everyone is doing well...

changes...

it's crazy.  our average schedule is lights out at 11:00pm, do reports and work by flashlight and the glow of laptop screens until at least midnight, then wake up the next morning at 4:30.  we do p.t. of some type everyday, either hand to hand combatives, ruck marches or old-school running and calisthenics.  then we're go-go-go most of the day, frequently in full body armor which takes alot out of you.  i don't think i've gotten to bed earlier than 11:30pm the last two weeks, and i know there've been several times when I'm up until 1:30 or 2:00.  and yet i've got more energy than i know what to do with.  i don't feel tired until i've got more than two seconds to sit down and catch my breath.  and then all of a sudden i pass out. 

i actually saw the majority of our unit sleeping on blacktop two days ago.  transportation to our next appointment was hosed and it was going to be about 20 minutes until buses arrived.  everyone immediately sat down in the middle of the parking lot, leaned up against their rucks and passed out.  and woke up 20 minutes later without any complaints of sore muscles or anything like people normally would from sleeping on such a hard surface.

my hands are getting tougher.  the skin is getting thicker and more resistant to nicks and cuts.  when i do get a nick it seems like it's healing faster now.  the little aches and pains in my shoulders and lower back are going away.  we run hard in the morning, and my speed and endurance is increasing significantly.  we will work hard, i'll feel the legs tightening up and a couple hours later the pain's gone, instead of nagging me for the next day or two.

i was prepared for the big stuff mentally.  leaving home, shipping overseas, leaving friends, family, job, etc.  but i'm getting back into the game on the little things.  pre-combat checks and inspections of my troops.  calling in every turn on the radio when we're rolling on the road, writing stuff down and keeping track of hundreds of little, little things.

we were pretty close to the top of our game before, but that transition from civilian to soldier is almost complete.

well, still alive. the warm weather has helped alot. my nose is cleared and i can breathe again. we're still in the tents. i'm tempted to write stuff about it, but some of it isn't complaining for the sake of complaining or sympathy. some of it's for historical record for me. just trying to remember what was going on when.

we might finish some of our training early and we might get a couple days off. but if we do we're going to be restricted to the immediate area. so i think bloggers should fly in for an early christmas dinner. :) it'll be nice though. go get a hotel room and get a nice shower and sleep in a nice big bed, get a nice dinner or two and just kinda screw around and get away from some of the guys for a little while.

anyways, hope everyone is doing okay. my google reader hasn't been working well and my connection sucks. i'd like to get over and read peoples' blogs but i can only do what i can do.

so they've shipped out to this tent city that's supposed to be close to what we'll see in iraq and afghanistan. of course it was largely planned by people who haven't seen either. it's incredibly realistic for an army-mock up though. the bad part of it is that in a short amount of time we'll actually be there for real. instead of sending us here six months ago so that people who haven't seen it could experience it and know what to prepare for, they wait until right before we go and stick us out here. talk about demoralizing. at this time we should be going into town, getting the last bit of gear we have, and doing what stupid army guys do. drinking beer. the young kids should be spending two months worth of pay at the strip clubs, half convinced that if they tip big enough she'll go home with them. buying books, arranging college courses, seeing movies, eating at good restaurants. heading out to the beach one last time. whatever. but instead we're sitting here with cold showers, sleeping in underheated tents, waiting in line for the understocked px to open and blah-blah-blah. i'm not complaining. it's really not that bad. for most of us we've just dropped into the old routines, and we just do what we do. but you see these units that don't deploy as much as we do and it just freaks them out and kills their spirit. and where we're only here for a couple weeks because we train so much and are really close to the top of our game, some of these are your "weekend warrior"/bumbling idiot types as reservists and guardsmen are portrayed in the movies. they're going to be here for MONTHS before they go.

someone asked me tonight how we're doing, if there was excitement for the mission. oddly enough, there really isn't. i had a friend who went to the army's sapper school 3 times. i assumed the first time would've been the hardest, that the next two would've been easy because he would've known how to prepare. he said it was exactly the opposite. because he knew what was coming up, and how hard/challenging it would be, there was no fun or excitement for him. he dreaded it, but because he was a leader, in a leadership position and his unit was going through as a group, he had to pump himself up and appear motivated for the troops. they had no idea what to expect and were excited, even though the training was kicking their asses everyday. kinda the same here. the guys who haven't deployed at all are kinda taking it all in with wide eyes, but the rest of us are yawning our way through some of this (don't take that to mean we aren't taking the training seriously, we are.). just kinda eager to get there and get it over with.

still alive...

still in the United States... relatively healthy (although i'm hobbling on a sprained ankle, let's keep our fingers crossed that i didn't rebreak one of the bones in the foot) and happy. i was desperately hoping for more sleep tonight. my boss said on monday that he wasn't staying up til midnight anymore. so now i do. we get up at four something or another depending on what's going on that day. so i'm a little sleep deprived. but i had to do laundry, so that's keeping me up. however i've delegated some of my work down, and trained some people in some reports, etc., so they'll be able to train the next crew of people that need help. still working with my problem children. good times all around.

hope everyone is okay.

internet

with some fiddling, i've improved my 'net connection. of course we're moving out of these buildings on saturday morning. but hopefully i'll get a post or two in before then.

well, we're on the way...

I've picked up a lot of new visitors because of Lori at http://toysfortroops.blogspot.com.  She's doing some great things over there and you should visit and check it out.  Normally I'd try to visit everyone's blogs and leave more comments, but my 'net access has been very limited.  I'm okay, my guys are okay, we're all doing well.  We're just going through the painful, painful process of "mobilizing". 

My unit is the most heavily deployed company in the Army Reserves.  To my understanding there hasn't been in a time in the last decade when we haven't had people deployed.  We're at 200% strength because so many people volunteer to come to our unit because they know we train hard, work hard and play hard.  We've got a partial company deployed to Iraq, we're getting ready to go where we're going, and then in the beginning of next year we're pushing more people to Iraq.  I'm going on my third deployment, my roommate is going on his fourth.  Over 90% of the guys going with me have deployed before. 

None of that matters.  We're all being treated like idiots going through this process.  I understand that.  When you're pushing this many bodies through all of these stations you have to talk to the lowest common denominator so that you can get people through quickly.  But then there's the active duty mind set that reservists are a bunch of dumb, lazy fat-asses.  I had the same misconception when I was on active duty.  Not because I had any dealings with reservists, but because that's what everyone said.  We actually were given a lengthy lecture today about how we were all on active duty now, on an active duty post and whatever nonsense we might do at home or on our drill weekends wasn't going to e tolerated here.  That we needed to act like professional soldiers for once.  Not because we'd done anything wrong, simply because of who we are.

The most annoying part about that lecture?  The active duty people giving it weren't wearing any indications on their uniform that they've ever deployed before.  They're not required to, but most people usually will, just to give themselves some instant street-cred.  

Anyways, we're doing well, we're in relatively good spirits and we're eager to get this show on the road. 

Hope everyone is surviving the holiday madness, and sorry for making the rounds.

happy thanksgiving!

happy thanksgiving everyone! hope everyone has a few moments to slow down today and appreciate the things that are going right in your lives, even if there's alot of wrong.

be good! and thanks for all the support.

turmoil...

today was my last day at work. it was really, really hard to keep from turning cartwheels down the hallway i was so happy. it was equally had to keep from flipping the bird with both hands at the boss. fortunately that professionalism thing kicked in.

this deployment isn't a bad thing. once we get through the stupidity and actually get in country i'll have a good time. i'll be doing hard, challenging work, i'll be working shoulder to shoulder with good people and when i come home i'll be proud of what we did. i know that. but just like the last two deployments, there's all sorts of feelings of dread late at night when i can't sleep. there are some goodbyes i REALLY don't want to say. then all the little things that i don't want to do without for the next year, and all of the nonsense that i know is going to come at us, fast and furious for the next couple months until we're firmly established and well into our routine.

i feel like i'm letting people down. there's so many things i thought i'd have time to do before we left. i always overcommit. there are computers i told people i'd fix for them. lots of unfinished projects at work that my co-workers are going to have to pick up the slack on. i didn't find a degree program to start on and the paperwork for that definately isn't finished. there's tons of projects around the house to do. i didn't get my car donated to a charity. i haven't mailed off any of the letters to creditors to explain my situation and invoke the soldiers and sailors civil relief act. i was going to help the next door neighbor look for a new car. i've been anti-social since i've been back and i've told plenty of people we'd get together for dinner or whatever and haven't seen them since before i left last time.

that back and forth, the ups and downs all compressed into such a short time frame is so hard to deal with. if they could just call me and say "hey, get your kit ready, you're shipping out in 72 hours" it'd be great. the months and months of thinking and explaining and answering questions... it's like standing on a cliff, poised to jump off into the water below. stand there and think about it too long and it gets harder and harder to make the leap. it's better just to walk up to the edge and take a quick second to figure out your approach, then take a step back and do it, without thinking.

signs that you might not be quite as okay as you'd like to think you are...

so once upon a time a buddy and i were walking down the street in some third world country. he and i were great friends long before we ever got to that little vacation spot, and we'd spent 2 or three months there, sleeping in the same tent. so we were able to have those long, comfortable silences because we already knew all the stories the other had to tell and were sick of the sound of each other's voice. we were armed, and so were the locals. there weren't alot of troops on the ground so we couldn't make people turn their weapons in because they legitimately needed them for protection. so you couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys until they decided to shoot at you. you could only trust your fellow soldier to your right or your left and after a time, the distrust just made you resent all of the locals on some level.

i don't know why we were walking down the road, i don't remember where we came from or where we were going but we weren't in a hurry, which was good because it was hot as hell. we were happy to just be strolling, thinking our thoughts. a couple hundred meters ahead we saw one of the locals on a rooftop, he and his ak-47 silhouetted against the sun. my buddy cleared his throat and asked "do you know what i'm thinking?" and oddly enough i was certain i did. "that you could shoot that fucker right now and not have any problems sleeping tonight?" "yup."

i pride myself on my professionalism. i can't see myself ever actually doing that. and his professionalism puts me to shame. i strive to be more like him. there is no doubt in my mind that neither of us would ever arbitrarily shoot someone. but would that professionalism be the only thing that would keep me from doing it? or stop others from doing it? or would little things like catholic guilt, conscience, etc... kick in there at some point in time?

bob seger

i've always loved his music, and i've always taken flak for it. "redneck music", "white trash", etc... usually from people who've never lived in small-town america and don't recognize the goodness that can come from people there. same with johnny cougar music.

i love the sound of the music after the pause. the "i awoke last night to the sound of thunder" bit. alot of my friends consider themselves to be music connoisseurs and don't see these to be complex. personally i think there's alot going on in some of these songs. and they resonate off of me, which is really all that matters. i think i've talked about my love of a certain girl as a youngster and associating "you'll accompany me" with her for so long. we were such good friends, such a good fit, for years it felt like we'd end up together someday. that song was just reaffirmation to me way back when. it was nice knowing i wasn't the only one.

things are okay now. there's alot of little things going on with the deployment. in the past when i've done these trips, i've been on active duty for months before actually leaving the country, which gave us lots of time to get stuff done. we're not going to have as much time this trip, so we're being forced to spend lots of personal time getting things sorted out and ready. so i'm tired. we're all burning the candle at both ends. trying to do the most to wrap up loose ends at the civilian job and around my house and trying to do all the stuff for the unit. i could complain about lots of stuff, but i don't like doing that. but it's necessary and it'll get better. the only way to get past things like this is to go through them.

if you're bored...

go to 3 wishes.com. if you didn't click on my link, go to "halloween". scroll down to the "ella mental" costume.

am i the only one who finds it a little disturbing that someone might find that costume "hot"?

that's right. more of 'em.

is one that i forgot about the other day when i was talking about slow songs i like.

and then annie stole my thunder. i was going to post this one yesterday:

yet ANOTHER music video

i think it was bad that "bitch" was her first big song and was so overplayed. it wasn't her best work, but it overshadowed everything else. i think by the time some of her other songs came out people were sick of the sound of her voice. or i could have NO idea what i'm talking about.

i don't normally go for the slower songs, but i can get lost in this one. kind of the same with some of dianna krall's stuff. it's kinda nice to know that women wonder some of the same things. we may have morals and we may not act on everything, but sometimes your mind does wander...

i hadn't seen the video in ages.

haven't done one of these in awhile...

big peach runner had this on her blog and i stole it:

Things about me that you may or may not have known, in no particular order:
Four Jobs I have had in my life:
1. assistant manager at a retail clothing store
2. department manager at a stationary/gift shop
3. network administrator
4. tech support
Four movies I have watched more than once:
1. star wars
2. running scared
3. the replacements
4. big trouble in little china
Four places I have lived:
1. tucson, az
2. altoona, ia
3. savannah, ga
4. orangeburg, sc
Four TV Shows I Watch:
1. e.r.
2. scrubs
3. life
4. boston legal
Four places I have been:
1. chicago
2. philadelphia
3. orlando
4. salt lake city
Four of my favorite foods:
1. pizza
2. steak
3. sushi
4. ice cream
Four people who email me regularly:
1. my mom
2. brian
3. the other brian
4. my dad
Four places I'd rather be right now:
1. napping
2. running (and enjoying it b/c I'm in such good shape)
3. freaking afghanistan already.  let's get it over with.
4. on the motorcycle
Things I am looking forward to this year:
1. hopefully getting promoted
2. uh...
3.
4.

airport randoms

-with very, very, very few exceptions you're really not important enough that you need to answer the phone in the bathroom. and it really doesn't impress anyone that you think you do.

-trouble had a post a couple days ago and i made some comments about how some guys who are considered unromantic show love in different ways. (some girls too...) and you just have to learn how to look for those ways. i was watching a woman struggling with a rolling carry on, trying to get it down the steps (the down escalator is stopped). she made it to the bottom and a just as she did, her husband caught up to her. she handed the roller off with a big smile and gave him a kiss and thanked him. said she'd never carried her own luggage in 18 years and didn't realize the hell she'd put him through, and he never complained once.

-alot of people who complain about the escalator being out a) made things tougher by themselves by not going the stairs instead (the height difference from step to step is smaller) and b) should be grateful because they need the exercise.

-more and more higher waisted jeans and less and less hip huggers=good thing. so few women can pull off the hip-hugger look.

-slc isn't the worst little city to visit. not sure that i'd move here, but some beautiful mountains, and a much more manageable size than some other places. i imagine that won't last forever

-i'm really starting to get cranky about the build-up for our deployment. put us on orders and bring us in and have us do everything at once. but quit calling me in the middle of the day and then getting pissy when i can't drop everything to come in and do something trivial. yes, i know we're "going to war", and yes, i know that's important. but so's having a job to come back to.

-there are ALOT of really short, really small waisted girls with no hips yet ginormous breasts in this airport. and it's freaking me out. it really doesn't look natural.

-today at lunch some really snooty chick parked her mercedes in the handicapped spot with no handicapped tags. can you call the cops on that?

-i personally do not tell someone i'm involved with to "go take a shower and think of me while you're in there" on the cell phone in front of a captive audience. if you're really, really unattractive, i'd appreciate it if you'd return the favor. because that's a mental image i don't want to be stuck with. bastard.

-ali larter is hot. and even though she may do a ton of really great things none of them will ever top the whipped cream bikini. which probably is another sterling example of my pigishness.

Another six sentence story

Now and then

When he was a kid they played "G.I. Joe" and  "war".  They'd point their toy guns or their fingers at one another and shout "BANG!" and one would fall down and then jump back up again a minute later, laughing like a loon.  Or they'd argue about having super speed or shields or magic powers that made them impervious to bullets.  Then he grew up, joined the army and went to war, where the rounds whizzed by over head and the shells exploded nearby and there was no magical shield and when you were hit you were really dead and he thought he was scared.  That was years ago, and he's home safe now and he just saw his own son running round the corner of the house, chased by the neighbor boy who's screaming "Bang-Bang!  HEY!  NO FAIR!  I GOT YOU, YOU'RE DEAD".  Funny, with no threat present he now knows what fear really is.

 

i'm having fun with trying these.  you guys are forced to suffer through my delusions of grandeur.