Month: February 2004

Duty & Its Cost

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I put my kids to bed tonight. Probably the last time I’ll do that for a while. We all cried. The goodbyes make me sad. As my daughter pointed out, there would be something wrong if I were not sad. I still don’t like feeling sad. This poem has come up a couple of times … Read more

A Date with my Girlfriend

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I took my girlfriend of 18 years out on a date tonight. We went to dinner, then to a coffee house for desert. We talked a lot, walked and held hands, spent time being a couple again. It was awesome. I can’t wait to do it again. Aloha

The Real Deal

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We completed and passed our FEP. We have been deemed qualified and ready to go and serve in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I’m enjoying a few days of liberty before we ship out. I return to San Diego Sunday evening. I have the final goodbyes with my family to get through. That … Read more

One Last Goodbye…

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One more watch. Monday morning we start tearing down Camp Cluster. That too will be a training evolution with folks looking on to make sure we do it right. It’s raining here. Hard enough that they are issuing flash flood warnings for the area. We’ll be packing away tents wet and dirty. That will mean … Read more

1 Down, 2 to go

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For being in the middle of a FEP there sure isn’t much happening on watch. I just finished my second watch of the FEP. Nothing happened. A Red Hat asked me to explain various tasks and systems in the communication’s suite. Pretty simple stuff. I’ve got two more watches in this FEP, the mid and … Read more

FEP Me

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Our FEP has begun. I was on watch from 1200 to 1800. Woo hoo. What fun. Voice comms were a problem everywhere. I’m walking up to the van to assume the watch and before I even get there they tell me to go to HDC and trouble-shoot their VHF/UHF. Off I go. Receive but no … Read more

Boredom & Surprises

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The Boredom — This morning we sat through several briefs that are required for deployment. Most of them were pretty dry, boring stuff. Death by PowerPoint, as they say. The Good Surprise — we did our Physical Requirements Test (PRT) today. I did 40 sit-ups (better than before but still in need of work), 61 … Read more

MIUW 104 vs Navy SEALs

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Preliminarily (do you suppose that is really a word?), I don’t like it much when my watch starts at noon. I can’t sleep until it is time to get up for watch but there’s really not enough time to do a whole lot before watch either. I ended up standing around waiting for time to … Read more

Too Much Spare Time & Old Friends

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We had the whole day off yesterday. It’s probably an indication that something is wrong when I get fairly excited about the fact that I have a day off. Anyway, not knowing what to do with all that free time I decided to drive up to Costa Mesa and go to Calvary Chapel for evening … Read more

Taking a Break

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Well, we get a day off. The schedule said that we were supposed to work straight through the weekend but yesterday afternoon they shut things down, reduced everything down to security watches and sent everyone home. I don’t have to go back on watch until 1800 Monday. So I end up with almost two days … Read more