Moving Target

This is in honor of my new resolve to put more things on this tiny tiny corner of the internet


This week I have been getting a bit stressed about OTS's impending beginning.  I had laid a lot of groundwork early, getting uniforms sown up and buying supplies, that I had felt pretty on the ball and ready for this.  Already going though basic helps assuage a lot of fears.  So does using works like assuage in blog posts that nobody will read except google spiders.  And now that sounds like an incredibly douchy thing to say and I feel like an asshole.

FOCUS PELLOW!!  You're writing about the mundane stress of packing and moving.  Get back to it!

Anyway I was feeling pretty ready ...and then the reality of 1 week left hit me.  I had been lazy and mostly put off clipping strings until this week.  I had forgotten how many strings proud blind people can put in a uniform (For those that don't know  all our uniforms are made by proud blind people who do quite an amazing job.  Better that I can do with sight)  Between ABU tops and bottoms, as well as all the new Blues I had to get there was likely half a pound of string clipped away.  Half a lb might not sounds like much but strings are fucking light and trust me, a half pound of strings is a metric shit ton of clipping.  Read a book, it's in there.

So I got this mountain of strings to clip, bags to pack, memorization material I still have not really looked hard or long (ha!) enough for, I'm out-processing my base, trying to get back in shape, and dragging my least favorite activity, moving, out through the whole week.

I went through many different attempts at packing early.  They were all a disaster; until (finger's crossed) tonight. I was limited in what I could pack until I had all my stings clipped.  I am also taking a printer with me that has to be packed.  You are only allowed the one trip from parking your car to inside the building to bring your things in, so it all has to be carried in 1 trip.  I don't want to be the guy who's struggling with 7 oddly shaped bags on the first day.  So I got this printer that is supposed to be super useful taking up half my bag, the other half is taken up by this giant Tupperware with all my materials crammed in it; shaving cream, toothpaste  squeegee, pens, rubber bands, ect.  Somehow I also need to lay my blues on top of off this stuff in a way that won't make the wrinkled to hell..

The most frustrating moment was yesterday when I was trying to figure out a new way to make more space where none existed.  My roommate's wife was bored and talking to me about something.  I don't remember what because I was trying to focus on packing.  I was also foolishly trying to do this without the designated packing lists they give you.  So I'm already stressed out, I've got my roommate's wife distracting me, and I have no idea what the hell else is supposed to go in my bag.

I just gave up completely.  Hours later I was laying in bed unable to sleep, still trying to figure out how the heck I was going to fit thing into my suitcase, and how the heck I was supposed to move my stuff out if I can't figure out what I need for OTS and what can actually go in storage.  I was also dealing with how to rearrange my storage unit to fit eh last few big items this weekend.  It was in the middle of all that brainstorming I finally had my breakthrough 

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A bigger bag!


Yup, i put my big sexy brain to work and came up with that; let's say genius.  I swapped out my luggage for this big blue roller bag that my Sister-in-law Peggy got me to move to college 9 years ago.  It's a little beat up at this point, but the thing holds a ton, has wheels, and best of all a lower compartment that should be just right to hold all my blues without any wrinkles.  Also I started doing my packing with an actual list and it went sooooooooooooooo much better.


So that's my 700+ word diatribe on packing.  This is what you get for even thinking I should post more.  Karma baby.

A New Focus

I just recently (mostly) packing all my bags for OTS.  I'll be leaving very soon, like in 3 days soon; and I thought I would take this opportunity to re-purpose this blog.  The challenge should not be too grand, seeing that I only have about a dozen posts in the last 18 months or so.

So with a new title and a new subject matter I'll see what I can put up here.  Hopefully I'll keep the bitching to the minimum and I'll put stuff up with the barest of frequency.  I know, I know, you've heard it all before, but this time it'll be different baby.  This time it's gonna work.  Trust me ;)

Poetry Corner

Presented without comment, my broken 3 week old Authentic American Embassy (c) key chain

ps I called this poetry corner and used a picture,  So congratulations, you just read a 100 word poem!  Go out, take the rest of today and tomorrow off and just enjoy your accomplishment.

Wow, sure is dusty in here...

Ok, so admittedly it has been a very very long time since I last posted.  Nearly a year?  Over a year?  Near enough to make no difference?  All three?  Questions becoming annoying?  Yes to everything.

So i was gonna do a big summary post to make up for all the things I missed and I still plan to, but this is not it. Something really exciting happened today and I wanted to share before I got too far behind and continued the cycle on not posting.

So I totally just got to ride on an MC-130 while pretending that my intestines were half hanging out of my body and get medivac-ed (sp?) the hell out of there.  It was freaking sweet!  I loved it.  We flew around for about an hour, and after about 30 minutes they got me stabilized and asked if I wanted to see the flight deck, and I was like FUCK YEA I DO!  I tried to go up there so fast I almost tore the IV out of my arm.  That's right they gave me a real-life, no bullshit, intravenous IV* and it was great.  If I had known there would be an IV involved I would have come in hung over, just to see if that famous cure really works as well as they say.

As for my injuries, they wrapped a big fake torso thing around my with a real squishy intestine curve sticking out of it.  Then rubbed some raspberry jam all over it and squired it with some red food coloring from a spray bottle.  I wish I had pcitures of the whole thing, but we brought some old uniforms and they for real cut and tore them the hell up to check our wounds (I had one that, luckily, I had managed to wash with the pen still in the arm and get ink all over) so as a result we left our phones back in the lab-learny place.

here's the best I got:

One of the medics started dry heaving because as he said in the debrief, when he runs out of things to do all he can think of is the motion of the plane and how it's moving and then BAM, motion sickness!  They gave the three of us injured guys big plastic ziplock bags as barf-bags, which would have been a great souvenear but alas, none of us threw up.

Although I did get one thing.  They did an EKG on all of us and they got back most of the sticky pad things, except the dude missed one of mine up on the left shoulder.  I didn't realize it was there until I changed back into work clothes and notices a suction cup thing stuck on me.

Oh yea, one other thing, to make up for nearly totally kneeing her patient with the severed torso in the groin, while in debrief the one medic made a balloon for me.

So by far best part-going up to the flight deck and watching the C-130 cruse 340 feet above the ground.  It is an amazing view from there, some of the flight deck windows let you look straight down into people's yards below you.  So cool.

And by far the worst moment was when the guy applying the EKG had most of the sweat on his face land nearly  in my mouth.  Gross.  It was pretty hot today, no surprise there, but for the patients it wasn't too bad, we just had to lay there, and then they cut the ABUs off us, so we were pretty much laying there in shorts and t-shirts.  The medics had full uniforms, body armor, helmets and they had to run out, carry us across the flight line, through the engine blast (which is very hot btw), and onto the plane and then roll us around and treat our injuries.  Then the plane's air conditioner went out about halfway through the treatment phase.  So they were pretty miserable.  Still.  Gross dude.  Kept my mouth tightly closed from then on.

Well this was fun.  I'll try and do it more often.  When I used to blog more than once a year I made it part of my routine to write something.  I've had plenty of good blog ideas over the last many months, but never had a part of my day for blogging so they all kind of faded away.  I'll try and add make my routine more frequent than once a year.  So see you January 2013!


*that's how you know it's real

The cleanest my room will ever get.

So Dianne reminded me that I promised to take a couple pics of my dorm room and share them with everybody. Then my brother reminded me that I have this blog thing and I should just throw them up here. So ignoring all the OpSec i've been taught over the last year I'm going to do just that.

Here's my closet with all my uniforms so neatly hung:

There's the kitchen, with the golf clubs creeping behind

Of course the most important part of the room, my server, esata drive bay, router and modem

That shinny thing is the laptop that refuses to die.

There's the bed they gave me with the government issued sheets. It will never look that good again.

Florida has given me a new appreciation of the ceiling fan. Civilization's unsung triumph.

And what dorm room would be complete without a crowded sink.

Happy M-Day to All Whom it Concerns!!

Today is not just another run of the mill fun day sunday, this one is special, it's Mother's Day!

So Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, especially the mom so nice they named her twice, MoMo!

Love you Mom!

Also lets not forget to thank the American Pie series for all it did for the mothers out there. Thanks!

A first post

So I though I would start things off on this new blog of mine. Blogs, strangely enough, have become the old gray lady of the internet. Twitter and the like have made the blog seem quaint. So nowadays you gotta set the tone on your blog with the first post, similar to how tv pilots work. A good pilot should give you an idea of the show; its potential, its direction, and its value.

So without further delay or preamble, lets begin the first post of my classy new blog, 'Hangin out on America's Wang'

So I got a new piss mate the other day, and now the bathroom smells like rotten parmesan cheese. I mean it smelled, like nothing before the dude showed up, and now I'm looking everywhere for a hidden chunk of rotten dairy product. And its not a complicated bathroom, not a lot of places to hide cured hunk of lactose.

The bathrooms are weird too, we have a deadbolt on our side, but once you are in there, you can lock both doors only from inside the bathroom. So you could easily lock your pissmate out of the bathroom without breaking a sweat. Odd system, really forces you to play nice with the guy that smells like Minnesota on a hot day.

All well, seems like a decent enough fellow, hopefully he won;t read this and lock me out of the bathroom.