The Muffin Man

A couple weeks back, my roomate, the BMO went on leave. Leave can take between 3 and 4 weeks to complete and during his departure I had come up with a perfect prank to pull on him.

The ops captain is a pretty funny guy and for the past few months, he's refered to the BMO as 'McMuffin' (the guy has a scottish name and some people can't resist the temptation when someone's got a "McLastName"). He's sounds kinda like kermit the frog and inspite of the hard time people give him, he does have good come backs and we get along perfectly.

Each day he was gone, I would go to breakfast in the morning and collect 4-5 muffins from the dining facility. I would then return to my trailer and spread them around his bed.

Long story short, after about 3-4 weeks of doing this, the BMO had a blanket of muffins!

One morning at 2 am, I woke up because of some ruckus, a crunching sound, and a burdened, "Ah man!"

I got him! I got out of bed and walked over to the BMO's bunk and said to him, "Great to see you made it back! We really missed having out around here!"

I helped him get all the muffins placed into a plastic bag and as it turns out - he had enough muffins to stay in and do breakfast in the trailer for an entire month and a half!

It's time to move

This past weekend I was moved out of my trailer. I no longer have a roomie. The BMO is in his own place now and I've my own space. It's not too bad. I was a little worried about losing what little social life I had out here but, I now have time to read, study arabic, gre prep, and well focus on all those little things I wanted to do out here.

It took all of saturday to shuffle people around rooms but, when it was over with, I started to sift through my worldly possessions here and managed to weed out what I am going to use for the next 6 or so months from what needs to go into permanent storage in my foot locker.

I'm ready to get the heck out of this place!

The Big Sissy

We had a surpise visit this weekend from a General and Congressman of my unit's state. They were here to visit another unit but, since we were in the same vicinity, my command managed to weasle in seats to dine with these two, prominant, individuals.

The day prior to the visit we were notified and my XO told talked a little bit about who these men were and why it was important for the staff to attend this function.

The general was the commanding general for the GA Guard. The congressman is from GA and at this point in time, the XO told us that he was part of the "sissy".

I guess that's how you're supposed to pronounce an 'SSCI' but, hey, I think there's probably a better way of pulling that one off. A way that involves less comedy.

One of our captains thought that was kinda funny and for the weekend he kinda joked about how a big and important georgia 'sissy' was coming into town. You had to have been there. It was a riot.

The function consisted of chow at one of our dining facilities. I ducked out because, to be frank, I had other things going on (I'm in the middle of a great book!) in the evenings and hearing a congressman tell me he's proud of me and what we're doing over here is something i see on AFN everyday. No offense but, watching the booty kissing and politicking that was also going to happen was not something I wanted to see anyway.

At this juncture, it was mentioned to the command that most of the staff officers weren't from GA in the first place and so an exemption for going to the function was posted. The phrase 'highly recommend' means "you are going if you like it or not and unless you're deathly ill, expect to be there".

I opted, instead, to scope out the turkish place and see a movie. Both were better than I expected and I got back from my event to pick up my now messy-from-the-move trailer.

The next day, I asked about the event and it turns out I had been correct. There were a lot of "we support the troopisms" (Hey, if you REALLY want to support us, enlist! That would increase my dwell time between deployments and we'd stop over taxing our already stretched out force!) and politicking. I didn't miss much.

Mind your grammar

We had a number of investigations this tour. I recall staff meetings where the XO and BC would complain about the status of these investigations and then calling specific senior officers aside to 'council' them on the way the reports were finished.

Things like word choice or whatever. Long story short, the XO has a penchant for fine grammar and the Army Writing Style is something he, apparently, loathes.

On occasion, I have been told that he places the red pen to sworn statements (which I have also been told are supposed to be presented as is because it's an exact accounting of events in a witness's own words). A couple of people have also told me they have had to make multiple trips around the country to have people redo the sworn statements and long story short, this guy has a specific way he wants to see these documents and if you don't do it his way, you'll spend a couple months redoing them over and over again. I also hear the standard isn't well defined.

Well, in order to improve upon the writing quality of these reports, we now have a mandatory English Grammar class that we are required to take during the week. It's hosted by (let the angelic trumpets cry out) a west point graduate.

Which I guess is supposed to be a gauge of how 'high speed' the quality of the training is - I don't know, I haven't had to do a report and that means I'm exempt. Basically, the audience consists of any and everyone who did an investigation thus far.

That's about it for now. It's the start of a beautiful spring day here in Iraq and I've a couple things to start working on.

ct