Back from the Lone Star State

Just finished my first drill with the unit in Fort Worth.  The trip was an absolute pleasure.  Everything about it was better than I was expecting.

I like my new unit.  It is composed of about 8 officers and maybe 20 enlisted people, but in the Navy, only officers can do defense contracting.  So, the enlisted people will be moving to different units very soon.  It will be a 100% officer unit in the upcoming months. 

Everybody was awesome and I felt very welcome.  I joined as a way to serve, but being around my fellow officers has been such an unanticipated pleasure that I really look forward to drill.  Figure I already have a lot in common with these guys.  So, it's good to have a weekend once a month where I can interact with people whose company I enjoy.

The military is a strange fraternity.  We sacrifice for it.  The administration in the military is absolutely horrific.  We have to go around with bad haircuts all the time.  We have to spend our money on funny looking clothes, and in a few cases, we have to travel quite a bit at our own expense. 

Mostly, we do it for the mission, which ultimately is to peform acts of managed violence on behalf of the United States of America.  However, I think the other reason we do it is for the people we get to serve with.

I got to get together with a lot of my old classmates from 20 years ago.  I attended Texas Wesleyan College/University for 4 years, but graduated from Kent State a few years later.  Jamie Lloyd (Basler) opened up her home and hosted a nice get-together with everybody.  It was an absolute joy to see everyone.  I've seen some of them here and there in the last 20 years, but this is the first time I've seen most of them since I left school in 1991.

I also toured the old campus with Jamie.  It was remarkably the same.  The neighborhood actually looked like it had improved a little bit.  I bought a yellow tee shirt that had "Texas Wesleyan University" on the front.  I liked it because it looked sort of old school and reminded me of my old gym class shirt from middle school.  I also got a wesleyan hoodie. 

I didn't get to run like I had hoped over the weekend.  The weekend was just packed and I am pretty exhausted.  I did run a PT test, which was 1.5 miles at a hard (for me) pace.  I tried to run the next day, but wasn't used to the heat and humidity and ended up running only about a mile and a half, again. 

My tooth is still killing me.  I'm also pretty tired, so, I'll take today off before getting back to it tomorrow.

I'll give the endodontist a call tomorrow.  He seemed to indicate that it should be sore for 48 hours afterwards, but it's still pretty painful 5 days later.  I'm swallowing down gobs of OTC pain killers.

The lodging on post was nice, but strange.  I had my own room, but shared a bathroom.  It wasn't as inconvenient as it might seem at first blush.  Once I was used to it, it wasn't that bad at all.

Next month, there's some gigantic helicopter thing happening at the Joint Reserve Base, so there won't be any room in the typical lodging they have for us on post.  They'll get us hotels off-post, but they'd be giving me a room-mate.  I'm not so excited about that.  So, I used some Marriott Rewards points and I'll be staying at a nearby Courtyard by Marriott. 

I also wanted to use some travel vouchers I got as a frequent flier on southwest.  Found out that I couldn't use them for both legs of the trip, but at least I was able to use them for one. 

So, this next trip is going to be funny.  I'll have 4 days in a hotel and half of my airfare for free due to accumulated rewards points. 

Next month is the weigh-in and fitness test.  So, I have a month to do one last push as far as weight loss and running. 

This recent trip is the first time I gave the new droid phone a test.  It is a handy thing to have.  Obviously, it's a phone but it's also an acceptable web-browser.  It worked as a good enough GPS unit during my trip.  In some ways, it's better than a dedicated GPS.  Overall, it's not.  Unfortunately, it's clunky and quirky as far as using it to replace the iPod, but even there, it can work passably enough.


However, considering that I also like to travel with a small digital camera, this thing takes the place of about 4 appliances and provides a lot of additional functionality as well. 
 
Although I really missed the boy, I'm going to look forward to these trips.  I should only have to do about a half-dozen of them next year.  (The military's fiscal year starts in October.)  I should also have a 2 week contracting course and the supply officer symposium.  So, it'll be a full year.  I'm just trying to clear the decks so I don't have to miss any of Logan's travel season, though.