Moving – Sharron was able to get our orders on Tuesday, so we now have the official paperwork to let us move. Our new move in date is 18 May. The orders, combined with her power of attorney, allowed her to schedule all of the moving stuff like when the movers are coming, furniture rental (free military type), etc. It’s pretty exciting, but it means we have a lot of cleaning and moving and unpacking to do this weekend (until infinity?).
Funny – During this recent base exercise, we had to practice with our chem gear. Since you aren’t supposed to wear contacts in your gas mask and glasses won’t fit inside it either, they issue you some special glasses to wear that have a thin rubber strap for your head. Getting ready for the exercise last weekend I looked all over the house for mine and couldn’t find them. I even looked extra hard on Monday and Tuesday morning just in case I’d missed them some how. Yesterday morning, after what turned out to be our last mask drill, I found them in the pocket of my uniform. Dork. Of course, I can forgive myself a little since I haven’t worn any of that stuff since March ’06, but not much more than a little.
Sharron met with the housing inspector yesterday to try and get them to waive our maintenance. He decided that we still needed to get a bunch of it, but after meeting with him, Sharron decided we needed some of it too. This put us back into our move in window of 18-25 May; still a long ways off. However, after lunch I got a call from the housing office saying that our move in date has been set for 17 May. Hooray! Sharron should be meeting with housing today to get our orders and then she can go and schedule for the movers to come. At the worst, they will be at our house next Wednesday and then at our new house on Thursday.
The reason I can’t go with her today is that we’re having a readiness exercise at work this week, so I’m working 12 hour shifts and having LOADS of fun. :-) Honestly, it’s not so bad. It’s really interesting in my current job as I get to see how everything works a the highest base leadership levels.
Tonight Sharron and I decided to be adventurous and head out to a Japanese Gyoza restaurant for dinner. The catch is that it’s in Tachikawa, which is a good 7 stop train ride away from Fussa (where the base is). So, we parked at the Seiyu department store, that validates with a Starbucks purchase, and headed off on the train (yay, we remembered how!). We arrived in Tachikawa with no problems and aside from a light Seattle-ish rain had a pleasant walk to the restuarant. When we arrived at the restaurant however, we found it to be closed for Golden Week. :-\ Golden Week is a 10 day holiday in Japan that’s like spring break. However, instead of being only for students, it’s for everybody. I want an American Golden Week! In Japan though, I hate it. Many places are closed and it just reminds me that we don’t get to enjoy a free holiday for 10 days. :-(
We headed home, had some pizza and watched Sex and the City. :-)
Sharron and I have mostly been sitting around on the couch for the last few hours. It’s pretty nice. Parker however, keeps disappearing into the rest of the house. We’ve caught him in the trash a few times, but haven’t really figured out what he’s been after. Awhile ago, after I caught him slinking away from the trash, I gave him to Sharron to watch. She smelled his breath and said, “He smells like pepper. What’s in the trash?” My response? “Chicken!” We’d thrown out some old chicken earlier and he’d been sneaking into the trash to eat little bits of it. How smart is that that he didn’t take the chicken out of the trash to eat it, but instead just kept taking small bites? Too funny. :-)
After being told about 2 weeks ago that we couldn’t move in to our house until at least 15 May, we are still waiting. Sharron has been reading up on the regulations regarding this and found that we can waive the pre-move in maintenance. This is exactly opposite of what we were told and is very frustrating to only be findin this out now. When we confronted the housing office they didn’t understand why we wanted to waive it as it’s VERY important. We looked at the unit and feel it needs paint in places and a few wall repairs, but not the extensive maintenance they feel it needs. This makes us very comfortable with waiving it. They agreed and feel that after another inspection with Sharron on Monday that they will waive the other maintenance and simply paint it for us. That would be awesome.
Last month, it was announced that the Air Force will now be awarding a combat action medal. Always on the lookout for new medals, I was immediately curious what the criteria are. According to Air Force Personnel Command, “The principal eligibility criterion is that the individual must have been under direct and hostile fire while operating in unsecured space (outside the defended perimeter), or physically engaging hostile forces with direct and lethal fire.” I had hoped I’d be eligible after my time in Iraq, but I was never fired upon whilst outside of a defended perimeter and I also never helped to defend said defended perimeter. Oh well, guess I’m not eligible.
Here’s what makes me a little miffed: Air crew are authorized award for this medal based on the following, “Individual must be flying as authorized aircrew members on aeronautical orders in direct support of a combat zone and in combat.” What this means is that anybody on aircrew orders that’s in a plane, cargo/fighter/bomber, that takes fire or issues fire, is automatically eligible to receive the medal. How are these aircraft that are flying at 10,000-30,000 feet in any more danger of getting shot than I was when I was in Baghdad and taking fire? They already receive medals after flying 20 combat missions, why do they need another medal for the same thing?
I applaud the Air Force for creating a medal that can be awarded to our personnel that are on the ground and engaged in combat. This is something I have really desired to see. I just can’t understand why we feel the need to again award our aircrew for something they’ve already been awarded for. I know I know, we’re the AIR Force, but come on!
Before I left for SOS, I had been going to the gym 3 days a week for
about 3 months. Once at SOS, I varied from 3-5 days a week. However,
once I got to Kuwait, I stopped going altogether. This worked well for
awhile as I was eating right and not really eating anything bad for me.
Until Halloween that is.
After all was said and done and we were back in Japan I weighed 10
pounds more than I did before I left for Kuwait. Not terrible, but not
great either. I started going to the gym 5 days a week as all the
fitness journals say that 3 days will maintain your current fitness, but
5 days will improve it. I was doing very well and had lost about 6
pounds when we left for China. After getting sick there I took it easy
for my first 2 weeks back as I was hacking and coughing a lot. I’m
feeling better now, but after all the heavy lifting on Sunday, my back
has been out of whack. Anyway, I haven’t been to the gym except for a
quick 2.2 mile run last Friday since before China. It’s hard to get
back in to it isn’t it?
After next weeks base exercise I should have no excuses left and will
start going to the gym 5 days a week again. :-)
Here is something I made in Kuwait. It’s in the style of my old Comic,
The Life of Pat, but I changed it to a 4 panel format. Enjoy!
I’ve been working on an annual training/quiz for my Operational Security job. I basically just stole a quiz from an online quiz generator and then modified the code for my purposes. The two issues I had were adding the date to the final report card and also adding the name to the report card.
After trying several ways to get the date to display, I discovered that IE automatically adds the date when you print. Problem solved. Getting the persons name to display was more difficult. With Urns helpguidance I was finally able to figure out exactly what I needed to do. It took me several tries this morning, but I finally got it running. I was so shocked I shouted, “Holy shit!” :-)
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