Huzzah and hurray!
As a result of drawing a short straw and pulling all night CQ duty with battle buddy, I've fenagled the ability to write a new post. First, however, I've got a short rant/rambling to do, before I get to the focus of tonight's post.
How is it my unit gets sent to a base forty minutes from the gulf, a base with awful faucet water that ends up getting people sick (mainly the shits), and then they fail to stock our latrines with any toilet paper. This is some sick joke, being ordered to drink as much as one and a half quarts of water an hour, but not out of the faucet, and try not to shit. Sorry to work blue, but lord it seems ridiculous and at the same time totally expected. Although you can, you shouldn't be able to spell Military without Contradiction.
Ever receive a smallpox vaccine within the last few years? Can't get it wet for five or six days, they say, as they plop the damn thing on your left or right shoulder, depending on preference. So I'm supposed to wear a garbage bag over half my body when I shower? It's practically encouraging bad hygiene.
Finally, why is it that Engineers, or at least my unit in particular, are somehow ghostly in nature, in the sense that no one else seems to see us. I can't count on my hands how many times a battle or myself have been asked "832? Are you sure you're supposed to be (enter activity here)?". I'm completely serious when I predict that we're gonna finally get overseas and some bigwig admin person is gonna ask us what the hell we're doing over there.
Okay, alright, enough of that. On to more enthralling things, like the fun doings that have occupied my body and occasionally my mind since coming down here.
A fifteen hour bus ride is no laughing matter. A solid book to read only gets you so far, and I'll never possess the ability to sleep in a bus. The military taught me one valuable thing so long ago, to sleep anywhere during anything. I once fell asleep in the prone position while at basic training, in the middle of the night while ''posting security", with my helmet resting very comfortably on my precisely aimed weapon. It was practically a thing a beauty, walking by you would have thought I was simply looking through the ol' ironsights, finding a target. However, through all that training, I've never mastered sleeping on a bus. Ugh...
So the route from Keokuk, Iowa to Hattiesburg, Mississippi is remarkably bland, for the first nine hours anyway. Staring out the window at the passing scenery seems endless, with all the same things passing by it's a continual feeling of deja vu whenever you find the need to gaze outside.
We arrived safely just the same, made the startling discovery regarding water and TP, unpacked our bags and promptly passed out. First day was unpacking, getting settled, and the second day was our first of many briefings.
Ever heard the term 'death by powerpoint' used before? It's a popular one here in the military. Imagine six hours of sitting in a room, staring at a projecter as monotonous person after monotonous person gave a lecture on every little safety issue, animal, enviroment, etc. etc. on the base. With limited amounts of sleep. It's like high school except somehow ten times as horrific. And way less women. This is what the first briefing consisted of, very much the same as all others with the exception of content. Sure, it could be worse. But a hard working, well trained soldier such as myself would much rather get the chance to run around some, bust some fake doors in and such. More productive training, as a whole.
Ah, but we'll get our chance at that soon enough...
Today was vaccination day, as I briefly mentioned earlier. A whole lotta running around from one station to another, praying each one would be progressively less complicated and therefore less time consuming. Mind numbing in many ways, however I'm chock full of so many death preventing chemicals I feel on top of the world!.... Not really, no.
Seven more hours of phone answering, weapons watching fun, I'd best get at it...
Keep on keeping on...
