Home

Finally. I made it home Wednesday afternoon, although I could do without the ridiculously cold weather. All in all, it was a good experience, I learned a lot, and made some good friends.

Thanks to everyone for keeping in touch and the words of encouragement. Monday it's back to the grind. I can't wait...

Last week

Well, it looks like I'll make it. Friday (tomorrow) is the last day of our last full week. On Tuesday we graduate and I can return to civilian life.

This has been a good experience for me overall and I made some good friends and contacts. That said, I won't miss active duty too much. I'm actually looking forward to getting back to my job, although that will probably change after about a week.

Merry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I managed to get home for a few days, so am very happy to be able to hang out with the family. Once I go back, I only have a couple more weeks until I'm totally done. Then back to the civilian life, until I get called to go overseas. It will happen, it's just a matter of when. I am not looking forward to it, but I think it's something that must be done.

I still get some people asking why I did it (re-enlisted) and why don't I just let the younger kids join the Army and fight. I just don't understand that logic. Why should they have to do that, and not me. We all live in this country. Besides, most 18 year olds don't have the experience or knowledge that is required in leadership positions. I'm not saying everyone should join, but it's what I wanted to do, it's something I feel strongly about, and I'm glad I did it.

Sorry for the rant. My father in law got me going on this Christmas Eve.

Ready for Christmas

Not much has been going on here at Fort Jackson. Don't get me wrong, we've been really busy. We were out in the field for a few days teaching privates how to use the HR systems. It's really sad to see how undisciplined the young soldiers are these days. Although all of the sergeants went back to the barracks at night because it was too cold, so all the privates kind of went crazy.

Last week, we had another long week with our simulation exercise. With that over, most of our class is over, and we're just filling up the time with a couple classes and a lot of other useless crap. It just seems like they're giving us classes on the same things we've had classes on weeks ago.

Everyone is ready to go home for Christmas, and it's starting to show. It doesn't help that all of the other officer basic courses in the Army are already out, and we're not. At least we're almost done when we come back from Christmas.

Merry Christmas all!

Back to the grind

Well, after a weekend of a fair amount of partying, it's back to the grind. We have a three day week because of Thanksgiving, so it will be easy. So far the classes have managed to hold my interest, although I have been taking more time to do homework than I would have thought. Nothing too difficult though.

Friday night was my first dining in, and it was pretty fun. It was a cross between a fraternity party and a military ball. The uniform was our Dress Blues, or Class A's, and we got dinner out of it, along with some drinking. There were also some skits put on by the students, poking fun of instructors, the classes, or the Army in general. I was exposed to some of the Army's traditions including the Grog Bowl. It's basically a mixture of 20 or so liquors, and ours happened to look like it was in a toilet. It actually looked... well, I'm not going there, but use your imagination.

If you do anything stupid, or don't follow one of the many rules, you have to drink from the Grog. Of course there were some people who didn't leave under their own power, but overall, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We continued Saturday night with much of the class going to some of the fine bars in Columbia.

Vet's Day weekend

Well, here I am at the beginning of our first 4 day weekend. Things are going well here, and I'm learning way more than I ever wanted to know about the Army. The classes are actually much more interesting than I thought they would be. A lot of regulations, but like I said, I'm learning a lot about how things work in the Army. My classmates are pretty cool and we have a good group. I'm pretty excited (that's what she said!) that we can have a coffee maker in the classroom (my doing).

In case you're wondering what I'm doing this weekend, I'm going camping to the Smoky Mountains. It was supposed to be a group thing, but everyone else backed out, so I'm going by myself. Coincidently, Michael from the tv show "The Office", is also going camping by himself this week. I just found it funny that it worked out that way. I am actually taking more than Michael, who only took a knife and duct tape. I have all of my camping stuff in my car, as well as some MREs from my last school. I'm only going for one night, but am looking forward to getting away. Unfortunately I have to come back and do a presentation and short paper for my class.

By the way, a camo Bud truck came by the other day and restocked the AG school. Thanks Budweiser, for supporting our troops!

Start of OBC

Well, it's Tuesday, the second day of OBC ( the second school I'm attending), and things seem to be much better than at Fort Sill. I got here last week and was able to take leave for a few days and see the family.

The post here seems much nicer, as does the surrounding town. I have my own room with a kitchen, and it's about 200 meters from my classroom. I don't think we'll be out in the field much, which means we'll be bored by power point everyday. We're still doing in processing this week, but we've already gotten our "equipment" for the field. It was pretty standard stuff, although the rucksack we got was about the same size as my backpack that I take my laptop in everyday. It's kind of comical, if you've ever had a real rucksack. I guess that's so we can carry our laptops to the field, if we ever go. It's about the same size as my kids' bookbags.

So far, they've treated like adults much more so than at the last school. We're told what events are happening when and it's up to us to get there on time, as opposed to getting us all together half an hour before we need to be somewhere and bussing us to wherever and waiting around until everyone is done, which results in a lot of standing around and wasting time.

This seems like I could get a lot out of this class, so I'm looking forward to the next couple of months.