Plans for 2006

Well, as the New Year approaches, I'm sure that most everyone who reads this is probably doing the same thing that I am currently doing... making New Years Resolutions and trying to figure what we'll plan on doing differently in the upcoming year than we did in the past one.
As of right now, I can pretty honestly say that things are going to be diferent in 2006 than they were in 2005. As anyone who's read my blog for awhile knows, I spent half of 2005 in the UK and the other half (almost) in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. But sometime early 2006, I'll be heading to a much different area. Afghanistan. I don't want to write too much, because I know there's rules about these things, so I'll not put any more particulars there than that.
I will however, say that I am still not quite sure about how I feel about such an imminent deployment. It's what I've spent almost 5 years of my life preparing for, and it's fulfilling in a way to finally be doing what many of my classmates are currently doing or have already done. Yet, it's quite scary, because it's probably one of the biggest unknowns I've ever faced in my life. I have no previous experiences that quite compare (for obvious reasons), and one hears so many different stories on the news, from people currently serving, people who've been there before, etc. To be brutally honest, yes, I am relieved that I am going to Aghanistan and not Iraq, I think the numbers speak for themselves that it is a bit safer there. At the same time, the mission in Afghanistan seems almost to play second fiddle, and it's a bit frustrating to hear my worries dismissed because "it's only Afghanistan."
I guess what I'm really trying to say, is that 2006 is going to be a unique year in my life, at keast up to this point. I'll try and keep this updated, but again, I know there's rules and regulations about what I can and can't talk about. So stay posted and see what I post. Have a Happy New Year.

Welcome to Ft. Drum

I now practically live in Canada. Honestly. I pick up radio stations from Ottawa. How crazy is that?
I have now been at Ft. Drum for almost 1 week, and I don't think I've quite made up my mind about my new home. It's cold. It's very cold. It snows. It snows a lot. There's ice. A lot of ice. But it looks really, really, really pretty with all the trees covered in snow and ice. It's not a lot of fun driving around though. And having to consider how many layers of clothing to wear every time I step outside my room leaves something to be desired. But, at least I am here, and am someplace where I will actually not have to really move over the next few years.
This morning was interesting to say the least. I had to chip ice off my car. My entire car (except maybe underneath) was coated in ice that was at least a quarter of an inch thick, with absolutely no exageration about that. And of course there was a solid 4 inches of snow on top of that. It was a fun morning, and really hammered home that I am at Ft. Drum. Everything they say about the winter weather up here is 100% true.
I'm starting to get settled in up here, we'll see how that goes. I'm just happy to feel that I've finally arrived. It's like the pause button on my life has been let up on, and I am back in play mode.

1 Week!

Our last major academic type thing for OBC was the staff ride at Wilson's Creek which we did today. How exciting, all we have left is the banquet, which should be fun; the rites of passage, in which we're formally accepted into the MP Corps; and outprocessing. It's so exciting.

Bitter, Sore and Still Not Promoted

Grrr, forewarning, this is a gripe session. I'm going to complain, pure and simple.

First, my computer died last week. I mean hard core, straight up, bit the big one, do not pass go, do not collect $200 (well Best Buy collected, but that's besides the point), I lost every single thing that I had. Everything. My pictures from Cambridge, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, France. The file of my graduation. My 50 page M.Phil dissertation and all of my various papers from my master's degree. All of the music that I had legitimately paid for and downloaded. All of the programs that I need are now locked out because I don't have the product code to activate them. It's all gone. It's so not fair, it really makes me want to scream. Or cry. I haven't really vented too much about this, because I kept hoping that they could recover some of the things that I had on my old hard drive. They couldn't. I want to smash this stupid thing, I'm so mad about it, but that would really only exacerbate the problem, so I don't think I'll be taking that course of action.

Next, I ache like an 80 year old woman. We did the 15 mile road march for the German Proficiency Badge yesterday. Only because of the way they marked it out, it was really like 16 miles. Not that 1 mile is really that much more, but with the way my feet, ankles, calves, knees, hips, etc were feeling yesterday, that 1 extra mile was about enough to put me over the edge. Our class looked hilarious today because probably a good half of the class was limping around pathetically. I have never had blisters that bad before. I could literally take all the skin off my heel if I cut away the blister, but needless to say, I didn't, I'm trying to keep the skin on as long as possible or it's going to be about a hundred times worse. At least we got the gold award, and I never have to do that again... unless Drum decides to send us to Air Assault. I've learned to never say never.

Finally, today was 18 months from graduation. Translation, today is supposed to be the day that the members of the Class of '04 get promoted. Well, because of the situation I'm in, nobody seems to have any clue about who is supposed to actually cut and process my promotion orders. And when I brought this up before Thanksgiving I was told not to worry about it, because it was still a ways off and it would be dealt with in time. Well, since I didn't get promoted today, it didn't happen in time. I'm pretty sure that it won't really affect anything, because the date of rank should still be today no matter when they actually cut the orders, but I hate the fact that I was put off for so long, and everyone felt like telling me it was my fault today, even though I brought this to their attention multiple times in the past few weeks. I can't win. I just can't win.

*Sigh* That felt good to get some of that off my chest.

Counting Down

It seems to me, the more I think about it, that for the last 6 years or so, my life has revolved around counting down. Days until high school graduation, days until R-Day, days until Beast was over, days until I wasn't a plebe any longer, days until Infantry Week was finished, days until starting at Navy, days until I got to go back to West Point, days until I was a firstie, days until I got my ring, days until the Gates interview, days until graduation, days until starting at Cambridge, days until my dissertation had to be handed in, days until leaving England, days until reporting to Ft. Leonard Wood, days until OBC actually started, days until the field exercise, days until the field exercise was over. And now, it's days until I get promoted (12) and days until graduation (21).
It's funny though, because it reminds me of the quote "Life is a journey, not a destination." Yet, because of the way things have been, a significant portion of my life has been spent worrying about the minutes until the next event rather than the moments that I was experiencing.
Of course, I'm still going to continue to count down to meaningful events, because its kind of my check on where my life is headed, after all, if I didn't look forward to anything, what would be the point, but now the upcoming events are a bit more nebulous than they were in the past. Kinda makes the countdowns a bit more difficult to do, but hey, I'm sure I'll find something. :-)

Field Exercise Complete!

One month from today I'll be finished with OBC! Woo-hoo!!

Last week was a big step towards finishing all our graduation requirements with the completion of the Field Exercise. It was seven days and six nights of super funness. Well, it was that time frame, and it was probably one of the easier FTXs I've been on (not that I've been on that many), but it wasn't quite the high-speed, all things super-duper MPish that I'd been expecting. At times it felt more like a Girl Scout camping trip with HMMWVs and weapons.
Compared to WP Infantry Week, this was a campout for sure. We had tents, cots, sleeping bags, two hot meals a day, and usually had a solid 6 hours of sleep a night. It was also strange to have the HMMWVs and not have to ruck everything everywhere. Of course, I'm not complaining, it was an improvement for sure. I think I even enjoyed myself, except for when I got really sick and was throwing up with some random 24-hour stomach flu bug that was going around, and then on the last morning when our instructors decided that CS riot gas was a superb way to wake us up. Oh well, it was worth a good laugh. Most of the girls in the tent, myself included, had slept in just our underwear and polypro tops or t-shirts, so when we were woken up by the Artillery simulators, and then started to get that awful tingling in our noses and lungs that let us know it was CS, we were all sitting on our cots in polypro, underwear, disheveled hair and pro-mask. Talk about super hotness. We all could have passed for the Miss Army November calendar... or not. I'm sure we could have won America's Funniest home videos if anyone had recorded it.

Halloween 2005

Friday night was the Halloween Party with our MPOBC class, another MP class and some of the Engineer OBC students. For my class, it was the night after our final APFT of the course, so we were ready to celebrate, especially since we are leaving Tuesday morning for our 8-day field exercise. I didn't feel like spending anything on a costume, so I broke out the Tesco devil costume I wore to the Jesus Halloween Party last year, and combined that with a red sweater and black skirt... voila, instant costume at zero extra cost!
We had a little pre-party in one of the girl's room, and Jordan (another Ft. Drum-bound person) and I had the unique opportunity to help a few of our fellow lieutenants put on their make-up... of course, they were some of the guys, but hey, I guess Halloween is an excuse for just about anything these days. I just hope that Marcus remembers to get some nail polish remover this weekend before he shows up to PT on Monday morning with black fingernails. Somehow I doubt our SGLs would approve of that at all.
The party was fun, although seeing some of the costumes that people came in, it made me wonder what our future soldiers would think of seeing their future platoon leaders dressed up. They probably would lose some of their confidence in us :-)

Halloween Group Shot

Here we are, all dressed up, doing a little bit of pre-partying to get ready for the party
Standing: Jocelyn, Russ, Larissa, Jess, Me, Jamie, Jordan, Patsy
Kneeling: Matt 6

Me and Jordan

Me and Jordan. Both of us are headed to Ft. Drum. We've been commiserating as it's gotten colder here about how much colder it is going to be once we get to Ft. Drum. For example, our conversation at the APFT on Friday was something along the line of:
"so it's about 35 degrees outside this morning"
"sweet, that means only 65 degrees colder to the coldest temperatures at Drum"
"bummer"

Helping Marcus with his Makeup

Brrrrrrr.....

It is cold here now. Somehow the weather skipped from nearly summer (in the mid to upper 80s last week) to the first part of winter. It's funny, I know you should be careful what you wish for, but this time last week I was really wishing for the weather to change at least slightly because it was an absolute sauna in the room after they turned off the A/C. It changed alright, and as I stood in the shower this morning trying to thaw out from PT, I found myself reminiscing about the temperature from a week ago. Guess it just goes to prove that you don't always think you want what you want.

And of course, as I ran outside my room at 0540 absolutely freezing, I had the comforting thought to fall back on that at 35 degrees, I still have another 60 or so degrees to fall before I experience the low temperatures that Ft. Drum is going to be throwing at me. All I can say is bring it on... and oh by the way, I'm augmenting my winter wardrobe something crazy here pretty soon, or I'm going to be a human popsicle all winter.

To The Beat of a Different Drum

I'm cheesy. I realize this. Who else would put the chorus to a cadence as the title of a journal entry?
So I'm going to Ft. Drum now and not Germany. It's almost 99.9% official. However, things can never be easy of course, and this path is proving just as difficult as the rest of my move from Cambridge has been. Boy am I glad I got a degree out of the year over there, because I have to keep reminding myself that the reward was worth all the ensuing hassles. Ft. Jackson got word that I was no longer going to Germany, and rather than waiting for the information to come down to them about where I was going instead, they simply rescinded my orders. So I am an orderless lieutenant. Not a good thing to be, especially with the heartaches I'm having dealing with trying to get DFAS to pay me some of the several thousand dollars they owe me for my TDY here at Ft. Wood. The 1SG for the company the OBC students are assigned to was dumbfounded looking at what I received today, because he's been in the Army a long, long time, and couldn't remember seeing anything handled the way my stuff has been handled. I'm beginning to once again remember the difficulty in being a "unique case" in an organization that is trained to handle routine occurences. Oh well. This is just another fun little rollercoaster to ride on my way to finishing OBC and heading out to my unit. Assuming I have a unit. Assuming that Jackson doesn't end up messing things up more. I wonder, how in the world did this Army function before the days of computer systems and databases and instant access to all sorts of wonderful information via the internet.
By the time I am done with everything here, I think I'll be practically be qualified to be a clerk. I guess that at least I'll have plenty of my own experience at dealing with problems and should be able to help my soldiers deal with issues. I'll certainly sympathize with them if they have any of these problems. It's turning out to be a royal pain in the behind.
And all of these issues asside, I'm finally starting to wrap my mind around the fact that I'm going to Drum. Upstate NY was probably one of the last places in the Army that I thought I'd ever end up at. Positives though, include that at least I will be in a location where I should be able to attend my siblings West Point graduations since the drive between Drum and WP is only about 6 hours. I will also get plenty of wear out of my winter clothing, and should be able to have some fun shopping for new cold weather gear. After all the twists and turns, this looks to be the next straight section on my life's course, so I'm going to sit back, and keep looking on the positive side and enjoy myself. :-)

23 and Getting Paid to Play in the Dirt

It's funny, sometimes I feel like an adult, and sometimes I sure don't. Today fell under the "days I still feel like a child" category, but in a way that made me want to laugh.
Last week we spent four days learning about urban operations, and the various and sundry things that we as MPs will have to do in cities. We practiced climbing through windows (being hoisted up into a window made me have a bit of a flashback to falling off the Ranger wall firstie year), crowd control, room clearing, and all sorts of stuff. Today was the final bit on this, and we had to do another TEWT (tactical exercise without troops), which basically involved getting a FRAGO and having to write an OPORD for our imaginary platoon and then listen to different people brief their plans for the same scenario all day long. Two of us were selected to build the sandtable for the people who would be briefing, and we spent almost two hours playing in the dirt getting it to look like a mockup of the "town" where we'd conduct our operation.
I just had to start laughing at one point, because there we were, two officers in the US Army, supposedly mature and responsible enough to be trusted with the lives of the sons and daughters of America, and we were on our hands and knees tracing shapes in the dirt. Our hands and knees were completely filthy, dirt was smeared on our faces from where we'd pushed hair out of the way, there were pink and blue streaks on our uniforms from where we'd used chalk to mark barricades, and we had little green army men and toy tanks and trucks all around. A pair of five-year-olds could have easily been substituted in our places, and I could just picture an irate mother calling out to us "kids" to stop playing in the dirt and come in and clean ourselves up. And yet, Uncle Sam and the government are paying us to do this! Inconceivable in a way. :-)

Oh, and in other news, it looks like I may be headed to Ft. Drum now instead of Germany. More to follow as I find out more.

My Visit With The Grandparents

Columbus Day weekend I went wild and crazy... not really. I spent the weekend visiting my grandparents in Texas, and also JoAnn, my grandpa's sister (not sure what that makes her relation-wise to me, great aunt or something like that?). To be sure, I didn't really do a whole heck of a lot, but that was precisely what I needed to recharge after a couple of stressful weeks. I watched a whole lot of football... disappointing loss for Army, a blow out for Texas, a miraculous finish for Texas Tech, and a gritty ending to the Penn State-OSU game. I was a complete slug, staying in my pajamas for most of the day, and I think I must have eaten about 10 popcorn balls :-) (Grandpa was on a bit of a popcorn ball kick)
I've posted a pic of me with them below, as I was getting ready to leave to head back. And it's funny that I was wearing a green polo, because they have a picture of me wearing a green polo shirt that was taken with my brother and sister when I was getting ready to head back to West Point after a long weekend my yuk year. Don't ask me why I still remember that day, but as most people who know me know by now, I tend to remember the weird little details (and forget everything I need to know for tests, but oh well), and it got me thinking about that other green polo shirt day and some of the regrets I have - yes, it's a bit of a step from green polo's to regrets, but bear with me.
The reason I remember wearing that green polo is because when I showed up back at school that day, wearing my green polo shirt and khaki pants, one of my friends showed up wearing a shirt almost the same color green and khaki pants. See what I mean about remembering the stupid things? Well, that memory got me to thinking about that particular friend, and remembering how much I used to talk to them, and now I haven't heard from them in over a year, and that saddened me, because friends are important and they shouldn't be allowed just to disappear out of your life. And one thing led to another, and I started thinking of all the people who I've been friends with over the years that I have let slip out of my life, and I think in many cases that my life would be better if I had been better about keeping in touch and letting the people important to me know that they are important to me.
It made me think of the song, "If Tomorrow Never Comes" by Garth Brooks, and so I put that in my CD player on the plane, and really thought about whether I've done a good job letting people know how I feel in case something were to happen and I couldn't tell them. I hope it doesn't sound too melodramatic, and I'm sure not planning on anything happening to me so that tomorrow wouldn't come, but it sure put me in a thoughtful mood.

Grandma, Me, Grandpa

Me and JoAnn

Qualified!

Wooo hooo. I am now officially qualified on the 9mm. Yippee-yay. After all, it took me four attempts to get there, but considering I'd only ever shot like 20 rounds on a pistol and that was 4 years ago at Buckner, I'm fairly pleased with the result of 42 out of 50.
The 9mm range is so completely different from the M16 range, especially considering there is nothing to zero, you get closer to the targets rather than having targets at different distances, you have to fire with both your left and right hands, etc. I think I'm a bigger fan of the pistol than the rifle, so it's a good thing I'm an MP and get to wear crossed pistols on my collar instead of stupid sticks, errr, crossed rifles. No offense to any infantrymen but hey, give me my HMMWV's any day and you can stick with your dismounted light walking. :-)

MP Ball and My PL Ponderings

Saturday evening was the MP Anniversary Ball, and after spending lots of time Thursday and the majority of Friday doing set-up for said ball, I have to confess I was beginning to dread what I had initially looked forward to. It definitely seemed like the right thing to do when they offered the sign-up to us, after all, officers are supposed to lead by example and going to the ball was supporting the Regiment. Not to mention the fact that it would be as a class, and an opportunity to get another use out of the ridiculous amount of money I spent on my Blues considering that they hardly ever get worn at all.
Somehow, though, the hours spent wrapping "gossamer" (read green and gold colored dryer sheets) around plaster columns, and setting up tents that were hardly used, and all the other trivial jobs they had us wasting our time with on the set-up really kind of turned me bitter on the whole enterprise, and Saturday evening found me dreading going.
In the end, I'm still somewhat mixed about it. The first thing I thought after getting all dressed up in my Blues was that the last time I wore them I was attending a private tea in Buckingham Palace with the Duke of York, and this time I was wearing them to a function in the gym at the post fitness center. Talk about a change.
As for the actual ball itself, the food was decent, but they ran out of it before everyone made it through the buffet lines. The centerpieces were the absolutely brilliant combination of dried wheat stalks and votive candles--our caught on fire when we were charging our glasses for the toasts, the table next to our managed to light theirs also, and I saw various tables around the gym had slightly singed stalks by the end of the evening. Luckily none of them went up to the point where it was necessary to call the fire department, but hopefully someone will realize for next year that this wasn't the brightest of ideas. General McCaffrey gave the speech, and it made me have weird flashbacks to trying to pay attention in class firstie year when I was so exhausted from continually having only 3-4 hours of sleep a night. So, all in all, I'd give the ball about a C+, maybe a B- for effort, but the actual execution was lacking.
What was singularly depressing was having to wake up on Sunday morning and go back over to the gym and clean up and tear down the set-up. It made it seem like we didn't really have a weekend because we had the actual ball on Saturday and then the clean up on Sunday. Of course, everyone was super excited to be there (haha, can you hear the sarcasm dripping from my voice?), and yet, despite this, we managed to get most of the work done in an hour and a half. Then we got to hurry up and wait. It is the Army after all, so I'm not too terribly surprised, but it was frustrating all the same. We had everything set and ready to be taken away, but the NCOs in charge of the cleanup had only requested two vehicles to transport everything and we spent the next 2.5 hours waiting for the trucks to come back after dropping off stuff at the motor pool or at the club. It was an exercise in inefficiency, and a valuable learning lesson in what to prevent from happening when we're ever stuck in charge of something similar.
For me, the icing on top of the cake was finding out at the clean-up that I have the position of student PL this week, and we have a double range with the M9, MK19 and M249. More OPORD fun for me, yippee. But hey, I guess to look on the bright side, the SGL said that she was looking for someone who could handle the work, so that means she at least thinks of me as being semi-competent. Now I just have to hope that I don't manage to destroy that, and get myself classified as a hopeless cause. It's funny, because even though the student leadership positions aren't really any big deal other than being a pain in the behind, it makes me realize that I still have a lot of worries about being good enough to take over a platoon sometime here around the New Year.
I know that if things went as planned, I would most likely already be in the thick of things with the majority of my classmates, but that's now how it happened and now I'm worried because there might be added expectations of me having some experience since I'll arrive at my unit as a 1LT instead of a 2LT. Little will they realize that I have no practical experience beyond writing a really long paper and OBC. But hey, I'm not going to worry about it too much, because I don't want it to appear that I'm just looking for something to stress about. I'm excited about finally getting to do the whole PL thing (for real and not a peer leadership type thing), and it's starting to hit home with me that I have only a few more months to finish my preparation for what will surely be one of the biggest tests of my life. In short, I'm going to enjoy my last two months at Ft. Leonard Wood and try not to sweat the small stuff, but real life seems to finally be knocking on my door, and I'm certainly ready to be done with school, so I just hope I'm ready to get out there and accomplish what I need to.

MP Ball Photo

At the MP Ball - Russ, Matt Wood, Matt Six, Jocelyn, Nicole, Jordan, Me, Meghan, Larissa

MP Regimental Week Fun-ness

Happy 64th Anniversary to the MP Corps. So, this week is the MP Anniversary Week, which means there's lots of activities and goings on happening around post. For the most part, our class has been blissfully unaware of what has been happening, because we've been good little OBC lieutenants attending class and doing fun things like issuing OPORDs.
That blissful unawareness came to a screeching halt this morning beginning with the Regimental Run. Now over the years, I have done any number of formation runs in large groups, some worse than others, with, of course, such memorable experiences as the Buckner run back, organizational run day while in Korea on CTLT, and the wonderful graduation week run. Today, however, definitely took the cake and then some. To begin with, the weather just happened to have taken a decided turn towards winter this week, and was in the low 40s this morning. Maybe that wouldn't have been too bad if we had had on anything besides a short sleeve t-shirt and a pair of PT shorts, but of course the uniform wasn't changed to reflect the weather. And then there was the little matter of what time we had to be there this morning. We were told we were going to be formed up and ready to go by 0500, which meant being in the area at 0445 with having woken up at the ungodly hour of 0420. We showed up, and it turned out that the rest of the battalion we fall under wasn't showing up until 0500 and we didn't step off to head over to the parade field until around 0520 (having stood freezing outside the whole time). Once we got to the field, we didn't even officially start things until 0600 after the general and his staff emerged from their nice warm cars. After an insanely slow shuffle that was an excuse for a run, we got to stand around and listen to a lot of people talk about how wonderful we all are as MPs and blah, blah, blah. To make a long story short, it was 0745 before we were finally released. We spent 3 hours outside freezing this morning. I had no feeling left in my hands from the wrist down, and almost cried when I got under the shower, because even cold water felt like it was burning. Yes, I was feeling a wee bit sorry for myself this morning, but I think some of it was definitely earned.
In further support of the Anniversary Week, we spent this afternoon as free labor in setting up the gym at the fitness center for the ball that takes place on Saturday night. There were about 75-100 people doing various things, but poor organization meant that most of us were doing nothing a good portion of the time, and it was crazy frustrating because they cancelled our classes, and rather than learning things to help prepare us for being good officers, we got to wrap plaster columns with gossamer and fake leaves (and yes, it looks as tacky and cheap as it sounds). And it's far from over, our schedule tomorrow also consists of additional setup for the ball, and Sunday morning we have to clean up and tear down. Bleh, bleh, bleh.
I am not a fan of Regimental Week. If I'm ever the MP commandant, I'm cancelling it.

Caveman Dining

Dinner tonight was interesting, and probably an experience you'd be hard pressed to find in most areas, but good old Missoura' pulled through and provided us with a "unique" experience. We were out in the field all day today doing stupid stuff, and decided that most of us were still pretty beat up from the week, so instead of going out tonight, we figured we'd just go out for dinner somewhere. Of course, by this time we're all pretty heartily sick of the limited offferings available in the immediate St. Robert area. One of the guys had heard from a friend about a restaurant in a cave. Definitely had some novelty factor, so we decided that's what we would do.
I don't know what I was expecting from a restaurant in a cave, but tonight was probably a one-off trip, because it wasn't anything stellar. We started to wonder what was up when we had to drive waaayyyyy out into the boonies, but figured we had already invested the time in getting out there, so we kept going and finally found the place we were looking for. We had to park our cars and then take a shuttle to where we would actually eat, and the drive in this van freaked me out, because there were spaces where we had probably an inch or two of clearance on either side of the van, but we made it there without incident and pulled up to what looked like a semi-dilapidated farm house. We were funneled into an elevator in which they only let us go up 6 at a time, although the sign inside claimed it was rated for 2000 pounds, so could each have weighed 333 pounds and still been okay, but we weren't going to argue with the guy. I was surprised when the elevator started going up, I guess for some reason I just assumed that it would be going down into the ground since I think of caves as being underground, but this one wasn't. Stepping out of the elevator was like some weird time warp, I thought I'd fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone or some camp horror movie. I suppose it's probably because this restaurant likely had its origins sometime at the peak of the popularity of Route 66, and the decor sure didn't look like it had changed much then, from the weird carpeting to the stuffed animals and bizarre fake plants. Our waitress was incredibly rude, and we waited almost half an hour for her to bring out our drinks. Dinner was served late, and pretty cold too, but it was passable. The best part of the meal was definitely the company, we had to have had almost a good half of our OBC class there, and it was fun to have something where we weren't divided up into little cliques.
All in all, aside from the fact that I can now say that I had dinner in a cave, I wasn't terribly impressed with dinner, especially since after leaving Ft. Wood at 6:40, we didn't have food on the table until 9 at night. So now I'm hoping I don't get indigestion from eating so late. Oh, and we took one of the international officers with us, which was a mistake. Actually, closer to a very large, borderline huge mistake. The guy was incredibly rude, granted I know this is not his country, but he had no social graces, he kept jumping in the middle of conversations, while people were still talking and blurting out stories that had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. Oh well, I guess at least we included him, so we did our good deed for the weekend.

My Poor Feet

Half of my class spent yesterday and today hobbling around like old people from the aches and pains after land nav. Of course, it didn't help matters that this morning we got to take an APFT. Wonderful timing, coming less than 30 hours after the end of land nav as it did. Oh well, at least I don't have to go out to do land nav again.
My feet weren't as bad as some people's were, but they still hurt an awful lot. I even had to choke down my pride and go over to the fire station last night to have Tana fix them up for me. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of mole skin and bag balm, my feet are slowly but surely on their way to recovery, although I think I'm going to be hobbling for the majority of the weekend.
Yes, life is so exciting here (and I'm procrastinating on writing and OPORD that I really don't want to do), that I have nothing better to do than write about my poor feet being blistered, bruised and battered (how was that for alliteration). Well, at least it keeps my mind off of worrying about stupid things.

Spiders, Ticks, and Sweat - aka Land Navigation

Wow. So my last post I complained about sitting through boring classes. Well, today may have started off with a boring class (a review of terrain features, map reading, etc), but this afternoon was definitely not an opportunity to snooze. We got all battle-rattled up for the first time (well, second technically since we did HMMWV familiarization yesterday), and went out for land nav.
I wasn't really sure how confident I should be, because the last time I did land nav was Buckner during the summer of '01. It put things in perspective realizing that when I was last out navigating through woods, the Twin Towers were still standing, Al Quaeda had not entered the American lexicon, and we were an Army training for peacetime missions. In other words, it's been awhile since I've done anything like that. We didn't do a practice course or anything, just dove right into the graded event, in which we had four hours to find five points. It sounds easy enough, until you actually get out on the course and see the vegetation and terrain. Yikes. That's all I could think of to say, yikes! I had sweated through my BDUs within twenty minutes of being out there, which was only a foreshadowing of the day to come, because all told, I drank over a gallon of water and didn't have to use the restroom a single time. Yeah, I was a wee tiny bit wet.
I found my first point within fifteen minutes (prior to the BDU sweat-thru) and was feeling pretty darn confident about my land nav abilities. Then I spent almost an hour trying to find the second point. At that point I started to worry. It took another hour trying to find my third point, at which time I had just about an hour and a half to find two more points and make it back to turn my card in on time. And, as fate would have it, I managed to lose my scoring card. Talk about a panic attack. I spent almost half an hour trying to figure out where I lost it, but managed (in what seemed to me a case of divine intervention), to turn into the woods at the exact location where I had come out, and sure enough, in a patch of sunlight (no joke), was my white scorecard. I would almost have sworn that there was a chorus singing "Halleluia," but that was probably just my heart about to burst from gratefulness before I said a quick prayer to the Lord for watching over me. Otherwise I would have failed without question. To make a long story short, I found the next two points in short order, and had what seemed like waaay more than enough time to follow the railroad tracks back to the start point and submit my card. Except that I went too far along the tracks, and ended up having to do an all out sprint (with my sorely aching tootsies screaming in pain), to turn in my card with a whole whopping three minutes or so to spare. I think I used up my share of good luck today, because things ended up working out well, though I definitely had a great reason to worry twice today.
The bug life today was awful. I lost count of how many spider webs I ran into face first. Let me put it this way, I ran into enough that I even stopped caring, and I am one of the biggest spider-disliking people you can probably find. It just kind of became an unconscious routine to wipe the sweat and spiderwebs off my face every minute. Spiders in Missouri are awfully industrious individuals, some of these webs were enormous, and left me with quite a squeamish feeling. I guess I almost feel bad because as large as some of these webs were, they had to have been some poor arachnid's life work. Oh well, I needed to get through and I couldn't very well go around every spider web in the woods. When we got back, we all performed the customary tick check.... and boy, am I grateful that I did. I found three ticks on me out there, one in my thumb, one on my forearm and one near my wrist (along with three squished on the palm of my hand), I guess I must have put my hand down in a nest of them or something, although at least I didn't end up with as many as one of the guys did, he had over fifty on his legs because he'd worn his boots bloused. Then, during our hour for dinner, I changed into a dry t-shirt and found two more ticks that had decided that they wanted to live under the band of my sports bra. Talk about disgusting. Oh well, at least they weren't deer ticks, so I shouldn't have to worry about any side effects. I'm just glad I got all of them off.
Night land nav was probably even worse than day, although it was purely for the same of familiarization, and was not a graded event. We stumbled around pitch black woods for over two hours, I kept rolling my ankle, and we didn't even end up finding a single point because they hadn't put out chem lights or anything. But, again, it wasn't graded so it didn't matter too much, although it was perhaps a humbling experience to be one of the groups that failed to find any points.
All in all, today was long, hot, sweaty, full of bugs and creepy crawlies. However, we were out in the 'field' doing something that involved working more than my writing muscles. I'm sure I'm going to be sore tomorrow, but at least I know I did something today.

Mindnumbing

I think at some point in my life I will simply have to accept that I have to sit through things that are completely boring, and that I will have to learn to stay awake. However, I'm still struggling in fighting the z-monster... even with a full 8 hours of sleep the night before. We have had some of the most incredibly boring classes in the past few days, and it's funny watching everyone in the class struggling to stay awake. Shoot, at one point even our instructor was struggling to stay awake and he was the one teaching the doggone class!
In other news, I was supposed to be going out to West Point this weekend for the Army-Baylor football game and the Systems Department tailgate afterwards, but because of things changing the trip has been cancelled. I didn't even realize how excited I was about the trip until I heard the voicemail cancelling it. Still, in all fairness, it is probably for the best, because this way I won't start off next week exhausted. I was looking forward to seeing my brother and sister, my sponsor family, and Grant Hall pizza, but that will all save for some other time, and at least I don't have to be at St. Louis airport for a 6 am flight on Saturday anymore.

One of the Longest 4 Day Weeks Ever

To begin with, all I can say is thank goodness this week was only 4 days long. I would not have survived a fifth day. It was that long.
Granted, I'm sure a big part of it is that even after being back in a routine for awhile, I'm still not quite digging the whole waking up at odd hours of the morning, and dreading the days when I have to set my alarm clock to go off before 0500. That's just wrong in my opinion. 5 is an insane hour to be awake in the normal scheme of things, but at least it's only slightly abnormal. Any time that begins with 04__ is just not right. Argh, oh well, enough on that.
We also had quite a long block of NBC instruction this week, which began after taking an absolutely brutal combat service support test. Our instructors are beginning to wonder what is wrong with our class, because apparently we had more people fail that exam than they have ever had before. Wonderful. At least we're giving ourselves plenty of room to improve as a class... I hope. Well, the guy we had teaching us constantly referred to himself in the third person, rambled off on the most ridiculous tangents, and at times treated us as if we were elementary school students, not a room full of officers with college degrees.
This morning capped it all off with a run that went downhill for over a mile. Yes, the hill was over a mile long. So while it wasn't too terribly bad on the way down, jarring our joints aside, it was absolute misery on the way back up. Oh well, TGIF.

Home for Labor Day

It's amazing, for the first time in recent memory, I was actually able to drive home for a long weekend. Granted it was a 7.5 hour drive or so, but I didn't have to fly anywhere. It felt somewhat strange. Someone suggested books on CD for driving, and I will say that it helped to have something to keep me awake and alert for the drive. I wish I'd discovered the concept sooner.
I haven't done too much this weekend, but it has been a relief to have a bit of a respite from the killer pace that class has been for the first few weeks. It also helped to have a bit of a recovery time from being sick last week, when I didn't have to worry about waking up before the crack of dawn to make it to PT on time. Hopefully I won't lose too much of my fitness level in the four days :-)
Nothing of note has really happened in the last week, just an awful lot of classes and trying to cram as much Army knowledge as possible into the tiny space that is left in my brain. After almost 20 years of schooling, I'm amazed that there's any room left at all, pretty soon I'm going to reach that point like in the Farside cartoon where the kid raises his hand and asks the teacher if he can be excused because his brain is full. I feel like that kid. My brain is full. It hurts to try and remember anything else - so I'm blaming any and all future headaches on information overload.

Thankful for Honest People

All I can say at this point in time is thank goodness for honest people in this world. All week long I've been fretting over having to come up with the money for the deductible on the repair of my car, but today I received a message from the insurance company of the man who backed into me and he has accepted 100% liability for the damage. The insurance agent I had spoken to originally had warned me that it would be a potential fight to get them to accept any liability, but such is not the case. It's a refreshing reminder that there are decent people and not everyone is out there trying to avoid responsibility, and I suppose that while its frustrating to have had damage done to my car, at least I was fortunate enough to have the situation resolved amicably. Especially with some of my faith in humanity restored at the same time.

More on My Car

I wasn't exactly very elaborative about why the car experience was so crappy yesterday. Aside from the fact that it scared the crap out of me actually being hit, just over 2 weeks ago I recently changed my insurance over to the state of Missouri. In and of itself, that wasn't such a bad thing, however, at the suggestion of the individual I spoke to, I raised my insurance deductible from $100 to $500 to save $100 a year on the premium. That decision is jumping up to bite me in the rear end with this little episode. All I can hope is that the insurance company for the other guy will pay up since I was in drive when he actually made contact with my car. I'm not holding my breath though, and when noone gets any Christmas presents from me, it's because I'm going to have to sink $500 into the repair of my car. And knowing that if this had happened on the 6th, I would have only had to pay $100 is really, really, really pissing me off, and making the experience that much worse. It's just not fair.

Oh, and then, as the bad luck continues, today I put on one of my brand new pairs of BDUs, only to find out that they gave me X-short pants, so now I have to go buy a new pair, and that's an extra $30 right there. I am going to be poor.

This stinks. Severely.

What a Crappy Day

Today was not a good day. I went over to Walmart to get a few necessities for the upcoming week, and when I was getting ready to leave, someone backed into my car :-( I am not a happy camper right now.

Off and Running

OBC officially started yesterday, thank goodness, I was about ready to go crazy if I had to do one more label merge for mailings or continue to pursue inane projects. Of course, that's not to say that there isn't a possibility that OBC may turn out to be worse than what I have been doing (certainly the inprocessing this week isn't a ton of fun), but the main difference in the way I see it, is that OBC is something that I have to accomplish for myself. Even the painful parts will serve a purpose. The only purpose that I was filling while snowbirding was to accomplish tasks that people didn't want to have to actually do themselves.
I still don't know what to think of our class, I've only had a single day and limited interaction to assess what kind of people they are, but it seems pretty good so far. It is kind of weird that we have several guys who are in their late 30's, one guy will turn 40 this time next year! It's definitely something I'm still not used to, and it really stood out when a few of them mentioned that they had served during Desert Storm. I, on the other hand, remember being in 3rd grade and writing letters to soldiers who were deployed. Hopefully everyone just trades different areas of expertise and doesn't start sniping about who knows more or who is better qualified to be an officer... blah blah blah. We already suffered over 11 different cuts aimed at the West Point grads yesterday, so here's hoping that we'll all be able to earn our own reputations on merit rather than being confined by people's interpretation of stereotypes. *Fingers crossed*

Feeling Like a Soccer Mom

I can remember the horror of being forced to do aerobics during middle school in PE class while the guys were doing wrestling. We all complained about the idiocy of having cheesy music and cheesy workout routines, it felt like a "soccer mom" sort of thing to do.
Yet somehow, flash forward to present day, when I found myself heading to the gym with another MP LT, for a step aerobics class. And then, because of the quirks of the Thursday gym schedule, the beginner's class we were expecting turned out to be an advanced class. We figured what the heck, we were already there, we had already paid our $2, so we might as well have a go at it. It's rather a horrifying prospect to do silly movements in a room with mirrors on the wall, but somehow, we gamely worked our way through the basic step, crossovers, diagonals, V-steps, across the board steps, etc, and managed not to fall on our butts or do anything too embarrassing (besides admitting that step aerobics turned out to be a blast and a good work out). Of course, it was funny since I think we were the only active duty people there, rather than spouses, but maybe the soccer moms know something, because I'm ready to have another go at it.

Almost Done Snowbirding

After today I'll only have 5 more days of snowbirding time left, and then it'll finally be time to start OBC. I can't complain too much though, because being here early has allowed me to straighten out some problems and feel established before starting class. And the work that I have been doing was rewarded when one of the women I worked for called one of her friends to arrange to get me a new fridge/freezer. The one I had previously was more or less an overgrown bar fridge. The freezer was not a separate section from the fridge portion, but was just inside the same area and had a little flip up door inside, and I was warned by the maintenance guy that it wouldn't work very well and that he wouldn't recommend keeping things up there very long and not to stack anything in the freezer because the only things that would really stay frozen were the things actually on the bottom on the cold part. It was seriously like living out of the bar size fridge as a firstie, when nothing could really be kept frozen. I wasn't too happy about it, and was told that I couldn't switch rooms and couldn't get a new fridge unless the old one actually stopped functioning. I mentioned it to the civilian ladies I have been working for in the Protocol office, and one of them called her friend who works in the place that handles work orders, and asked if I would be reimbursed for any food that spoiled as a result of thawing. Miraculously, I had a new fridge (with an actual separate freezer section) later that same day. Score 1 for the snowbird connections!
Now I can only hope that my TDY orders get fixed similarly. I finally received my orders, and not only are they refusing to pay for anything until the 14th of August, they had also put me down as a Major! (I told the CO that I now outranked him according to my orders.) At least there is still a week before class starts, so hopefully that can be resolved before it becomes too big of a problem. We shall see.
My parents are coming down this weekend and bringing some of the things I couldn't fit into my car the first time I came here, and my TDY shipment from England is supposed to be delivered this afternoon, so I should be fairly established in my room after this weekend.

Getting Settled In

After over 3 weeks at Ft. Leonard Wood, aka Ft. Wood or Ft. Lost-in-the-Woods, I have my BOQ room. It's not too bad I suppose, because after all, it is right across from the builiding where I'll have the majority of my classes and the rooms are all relatively new. I also have my own kitchenette (complete with microwave, 2 stove top burners, sink, fridge and freezer) and my own bathroom, so it's definitely a step up in terms of privacy compared to my room at Cambridge. There were two different sets of buildings where I could have ended up at, and I got the location I was hoping for, although of course there are some drawbacks, but I'm satisfied and not going to worry about the little things, because the location is key and will help save on gas money and aimless driving back and forth across post.
It's kind of bittersweet to have my own place to stay now, because I've gotten pretty attached to the family (well, couple really since their only son is at WP in Brandon's class), and it's going to be hard to move out of there. I think for awhile, at least until my class actually starts, I may very well be splitting my time between my new room and the Wooten's. We shall see. As far as why I've gotten attached to the people I'm staying with, let me give you this as an example, yesterday I got to go horseback riding and ride on a motorcycle for the first time. They have 3 cats, 3 dogs, and 2 horses. The cats are addictive, and I think once I have a place of my own for real (and any pesky deployments out of the way), I'm probably going to be getting a cat of my own.
Righty, enough for now, time to hit the gym, we have our diagnostic APFT in less than 2 weeks, so still desperately trying to get myself semi-fit after the past year.

Miserably Hot in Missouri

It's been awhile since I've updated this. And of course I could come up with the excuse that I've been moving (which I have), but I just really haven't made an effort to take the time to type something. I won't have my own computer hooked up until sometime in August, so that's part of the inconvenience that prevents easy writing. 'Nuf for the excuses.
I have been in Missouri for a little over two weeks now. It's a whole 'nother world from England, when 80 degrees seemed like an incredibly hot day. We're had heat indexes well over a 100 for the last week and it's a killer. Running in the morning feels like breathing through a sponge because of the humidity. At least I am getting back into shape fairly quickly, considering that I ran a 15 minute two-mile this morning on only about 3 weeks of aerobic activity. I've got another 3 weeks before the diagnostic APFT, so hopefully I'll get it down into the low 14s before then. Snowbirding is tedious. I'm frustrated by the things they have me doing, but I have to do them with a smile so the civilian I am working for doesn't report me to the CO for being a lazy snowbird. So far I have typed pamphlets, assembled packets, folded invitations, carried sand for a beach-themed party, and done price comparison between the commissary and wal-mart for the upcoming Anniversary Week at the end of September. Thank goodness I'll be halfway done with my snowbirding time as of Wednesday, or I think I'd shoot someone.
The good thing is that one of my old roommate's got here Saturday to start Engineer OBC, so at least I now know a few people, and there are more snowbirds than just me around (although I think I got stuck with the stupidest job, oh well). August 14th is the magical day when I finally start OBC, having been waiting for over a year since graduation, I think I'm ready for it to start. At least I'm adjusting to the Army life again fairly easily, so hope things go smoothly.

More to come when I get a chance...

Thoughts on London

The last couple days have been incredibly good and incredibly bad for London. More so than New York, and probably even more so than Chicago, London is the big city closest to my heart. In the past year I've spent a lot of time in and around London, and it's an incredible place. Hearing yesterday morning that London was succesful in its bits for the 2012 Olympic games brought a great big smile to my face. "Back the Bid" has been huge in the city this past year, and its wonderful to see such an inspired effort result in success. Today however, brought the elation crashing to the ground as I saw the tube stops and double decker busses that I have taken countless time on every TV channel. My heart goes out to the people of London, and I think how easily it could have been me if the attack happened just a few weeks sooner. What a horrible thing to have happen after the highs of yesterday. It sickens me to see these attacks and reinforces why I feel I have to serve. I won't stand to see people, places and things near and dear to me attacked. London is strong and will overcome this attack, of that I have no doubt, but it shouldn't have to. Things like this shouldn't happen. My prayers are with the city and her people today.

Back in the US

I've been back in the US since Saturday evening, it feels very strange knowing that I'm not returning to Cambridge in a week or two. The flight home was lonnnnggggg. I left Cambridge by taxi at 7:40 in the morning, and the plane flew out of Mildenhall sometime around 12:40, and then flew to the Azores. The only bad thing was that the plane had absolutely aweful insulation, and I spent the entire flight freezing since I had a window seat. Still, at least I made it to Baltimore safely after we left the Azores and had a delightful two days visting and catching up with friends in the DC area. My flight on Monday to Chicago was delayed for over an hour, and we just sat on the runway which was frustrating.
However, after all of that, I am home. I have my car again (as my increased insurance payments attest to). I report to Ft. Leonard Wood on Saturday, and I have to think about being back in the Army again. More to come... for now I'm off to enjoy being an American consumer. :-)

Change is Good

Alrighty, if you've noticed by now (or not), I've changed the title and description of my blog but not the address. I figure that I want to keep all the posts I've written before, and I don't know who all has the address, so rather than change to a new blog, I'll just keep going with the one I've got. Of course, this assumes a small bit of self-confidence on my part that people actually read this and will care that I've changed it, but I'm going to pretend I didn't just think of that and assume that people do. It makes me feel good about myself, and it's rather therapeutic to keep a journal, but typing is so much easier than writing everything out longhand. So the address http://heatheratcambridge.blogspot.com will still work for this blog, even though I'm not at Cambridge anymore (at least I won't be as of Saturday).

I'm sure it may be a bit wrong if you want to get all technical about it, and maybe I should have changed the web address, but it's easier this way, and I like it. So there. Ha.

I am making some changes, but some things stay the same.

A British BBQ and Moving

Last night I went to a bbq at one of my friend's houses in celebration of her upcoming birthday (it's on Saturday, the day I'm leaving unfortunately). In typical English weather, we had rain on and off for the whole afternoon and evening, but we stuck it out and enjoyed ourselves despite the weather, and had a gorgeous rainbow to boot, so there were some fringe benefits to the weather behaving the way it did. All of the guys who have spent time in Britain said that it's typical of British BBQs to be either held despite the rain or to be rained out, and that there is a certain expectation that things will be wet. It's just the way things are, and they simply have to make up their minds to enjoy themselves despite the weather or they'll never have much fun. A good attitude to adopt I think.
After the gloriously warm and sunny weather of the previous week, this week has been somewhat of a let down, because it has been cold and rainy for the majority of the time. However, since my fan left on Tuesday morning along with the majority of my belongings, it's probably a relief that it is cooler this week, I barely managed to sleep last week with the fan on full blast, so I would have sweltered to death without it I'm sure. My room is sooooo incredibly empty now, and having the movers come and pack everything up sent home the reality that I am leaving and that at this point, I have around 48 hours left in the UK before I am on my way back to the States. It took them less than 2 hours to have everything packaged up between the things that will be joining me in Missouri next month and those things that I won't see again until January or February. It was an awful process trying to figure out what should go where, I spent most of Sunday and Monday just sorting through things and changing my mind about which shipment everything should go in. I'm sure that I put things in the wrong shipment, but oh well, I can make do with what I have. The biggest mistakes so far that I have noticed already: my umbrella got shipped, oops, definitely needed that this week with the aforementioned weather; my checkbook for my USAA account is packed in the shipmen to Germany, I never sorted through the last bit of papers that I meant to; and my bike didn't get sent to Leonard Wood and had to make do with Germany. Still, all things considered, I did pretty well, and at least I had things organized before the movers came.

A Last Lunch With Friends

Rita, Me and Tharini having a last Tuesday lunch at the Cow. All three of us were on the Management Studies program this year, and I'm really going to miss them. Rita left on Thursday morning, and it seemed so strange that this wasn't like leaving at Christmas or Easter. I know I've already done the good-byes after graduation last year from West Point, but this just seems unfair because we were only here for the nine months and it's already time to move on.

My Last Week Begins

It's officially Saturday morning now, and I'm still awake. I blame that on the lack of air conditioning and the huge bugs that are flying in my open window and seem to land on my face every time I've just about dozed off. It's a no win situation, the window closed makes the room heat up and the window open lets in the bugs. So, instead of being snuggled in my bed, I'm awake and contemplating the start of my last week in Cambridge. In one week and 8 hours I will be sitting in the waiting area at the passenger terminal at RAF Mildenhall and ready to start on my journey home.
I say journey, because it isn't a short little jaunt across the ocean. Nope, the joys of the Air Mobility Command chartered flights mean that instead of flying on a commercial plane that would take off from London and land in Chicago about 8 hours later, I get to get on a plane that will take off from Mildenhall and head to Lajes Field in the Azores (apparently there and not Argentina as I was originally led to believe by the airport code) before landing at Baltimore. From there I have to make my own way home because since I'm taking leave the military doesn't have to arrange transport the rest of the way. What a lovely setup. However, luckily I have friends that I will be visiting in the DC metro area for a few days, so the odyssey won't turn out to be a complete waste of time. Still, it's going to be one looooonnnng day with that flight plan. If I hadn't been able to work it to see my friends I would have been one unhappy camper. I haven't seen them since President's Day weekend last year when I stayed with them after the Gates' interview. Seems fitting somehow then that I should wrap up my Gates experience with some of the people I was with the weekend I spent fretting over how I had done and wondering what my future was going to hold.
Knowing that I'm done is bitter-sweet. I'm ready to move on to the next chapter of my life, but its hard to say good-byes. Still, since I have to do this all over again in December when I finish up OBC, I suppose that good-byes are something that I have to get used to with the military life.

May Ball Pictures

Alex and Me at Jesus May Ball

Jacques and Ashley

Me and the 2 Jamie's

Nick and Me at Jesus May Ball

Me and Ash before the Jesus May Ball

Pictures from Scotland, Stonehenge and Salisbury

Inside the Cloister of Salisbury Cathedral

Ash and I at Stonehenge

Me and Ash on Loch Lomond

Birds Flying Over Loch Lomond

Me, Posing With a Kilted Statue at Stirling Castle

Ash and I at Stirling Castle

The "Braveheart" William Wallace Memorial

Edinburgh Castle at Night

Me and Ash at Edinburgh Castle

My Trip With Ashley

Last week Ashley and I set out to Edinburgh, London, Salisbury and Stonehenge. I wanted to be able to show her as much of the UK as possible in her time here, and see some areas that I hadn't been able to see during the past year. Conveniently, the National Express Coach service was having a special through the end of June whereby anyone with a student coachcard could travel for £10 each leg of a trip. So for only £40 each, we could take the coaches to Scotland, then to London, on to Salisbury and return to Cambridge. The long coach rides aren't the most fun, and aren't as fast as flying or the train would have been, but it's hard to argue with the price.
Scotland was the first part of our trip, and after arriving over an hour late because we had a flat tire during the middle of the trip, we had a whole day ahead of us to see Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyrood House, and took a sightseeing bus tour of the city in a double decker bus. The downside was that we had decided that because of our travel schedule, we were each limited to what we could fit into our backpacks, and we had to carry the backpacks around with us since it was too early to check in at the hotel where we were spending the night. We were a bit tired and achy after we finally finished our day of sightseeing and checked into the hotel. It felt extremely good to not have the backpacks on anymore. That night we went to "Jamie's Scottish Evening" at one of the hotels in Edinburgh and had a traditional Scottish dinner (complete with tasting portions of haggis), Scottish music (bagpipes and such), Scottish dancing and singing, and had a great time, although Ashley ended up turning her haggis into a piece of abstract art rather than eating it. The second day in Scotland we went on a bus tour that went to Linlithgow, Stirling Castle, thru the Trossachs and to Loch Lomand. We went on a cruise out onto the Loch and enjoyed the view, although the Scottish weather was a bit bracing given that it was the summer and we had just come from the heat wave that England was enjoying.
In London we went to the Tower of London, walked by Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament up to Trafalgar Square, and enjoyed a bit of a nap to catch up from the long bus ride. We then saw The Producers that night, and we both laughed our patooties off along with the rest of the audience, it was an hilarious show. The next day we went to Westminster Abbey and visted there during the morning after having to wait in a queue for a good 40+ minutes. We had to figure out what else to do, and at the spur of the moment decided to go to Leicester Square and see what half price tickets were available. So we went to the matinee that afternoon of We Will Rock You, the muscial based on the music of Queen, after debating between that and the Far Pavilion. Although, as it turned out later, the initial decision wasn't that important since we decided that we would go see the other one for the evening show! So in the two full days in London we saw three musicals. I was absolutely delighted, and had a great time. It was also just nice to spend a quality week with my sister.
After leaving London we went to Salisbury because there's a local bus service that runs from there out to Stonehenge. Under a gorgeous sunny sky we walked around the stones and pondered how they came to be there. I was there last March, but they were still quite impressive and awe-inspiring. After we got back to Salisbury we went up to see Salisbury Cathedral and then walked around town before dinner. We left on Monday morning and arrived back at Cambridge in time to rest, eat a late lunch and get ready for the Jesus College May Ball. I'll write more about that later.

Frustrations With My Orders

Weekends are great, I really enjoy them usually. However, this weekend is dragging on forever and ever, because I really need to get in touch with people regarding my orders, and they're obviously not in on the weekend. So this is one weekend that I'm not really enjoying too much, because it is a lot of cooling my heels and waiting.
As an update, the way things stand now, Student Detachment won't approve my leave form because they say I am requesting too much leave. I need my orders amended such that I am authorized to report early to OBC, and this will solve the problem. However, my branch assignments officer has not responded to my email and even though I tried calling twice on Friday he was not in the office apparently because I got his voice mail both times. It's really getting down to the crunch time when I need all of this straightened out, especially because I will not be around and will not have email access from the 14th-20th. I have made so many phone calls, sent so many emails and nothing has come of anything yet. Everyone is pushing me off on someone else, and no one is willing to take the responsibility to ensure that the situation gets resolved. I don't know what I'm going to do if they don't get this solved in the next week, because it affects my ability to leave the country and my lease expires on 2 July. They also expect me to fly out on the military rotator flight from RAF Mildenhall, despite that there is no direct public transportation available from here to there, and despite the fact that the flight arrives in Baltimore too late for me to be able to catch a flight the night I will arrive which will necessitate me spending a night in the airport. Not a cool situation whatsoever, but no one is doing anything for me. I wish I could just go and sit in someone's office and bug them until they take care of this, but unfortunately, all the people I need to do things are halfway across the world, so I'm left stewing. It's not good to have a unique situation in the military. They're all trained to deal with the routine cases, and are unwilling to move outside the comfort zone to deal with the unusual situation I find myself in. If there were a July OBC for MPs, I doubt this would be a problem. It's not my fault they don't have one until August. Grrrrrrrrrr.

The Queen Comes to Cambridge

The Queen's Motorcade through Cambridge

HM Queen Elizabeth II, seen through the window of her car

This Really is Like a Holiday

I must say, having my dissertation turned in means that I really have nothing pressing to do. It's an amazing feeling to wake up in the morning and know that I really have all the freedom in the world to do exactly as I please.
Currently, that means that I have been making plans for when my sister comes to visit next week. We now have bus tickets to go from Cambridge to Edinburgh, London and Salisbury (to see Stonehenge), and then back to Cambridge to be here in time for the Jesus May Ball. I've also managed to find hotel rooms for all the nights that we will be away - although we're getting away cheaply two of the nights because we are doing overnight bus trips to and from Edinburgh. It's going to be a lot of riding on buses to get to and from places, but the National Express Coach service is running a special whereby it's only £10 for a ticket between any two places in the UK, and the one way tickets to Edinburgh are normally something in the area of £40 for a ticket, so that's quite a significant savings, and I've heard that Edinburgh is a great place to visit, so I'm quite excited. We don't really have anything specific planned for while we're there (in part because I was making these decisions while Ashley was down in Texas visiting our grandparents, so I didn't want to be too dictatorial about her visit :-P).
The weather has been pretty nice over the last few days, and I have been able to spend some time out with friends. I went for a walk with one of my friends and told her all about the visit to NYC, and it was just so relaxing to walk around outside and enjoy how pretty Cambridge is in the springtime - although I think I must have sat on an insect nest of some sort, because when we were walking back through town I was biten about 5 times. We sat on the edge of the river across from Trinity, and there was one female duck being chased by about 5 males. She was quite a cheeky little thing though, and came within a foot of me trying to steal my snack. Still, I felt sorry for her being outnumbered by all the guy ducks. There's something quite therapeutic about being able to just talk over all your worries with others and realize that everyone has concerns. I'd never survive as a hermit, because if I don't talk over things, they just eat away at me, but they seem much more manageable after talking them over.
Yesterday I went shopping with another group of friends because one of them needed a dress for the May Ball she is going to. It was such fun just to be with a group of girls and compare the merits of all the dresses that we found. We even saw when the Queen drove through the city centre as she left Cambridge. It was funny because it was actually fairly low-key, and it was predominantly women that were lining the area. We had dinner sitting out by the river and enjoying the good weather, and then played cards for awhile. I even managed to teach two of them how to play blackjack, go fish, and bullshit (the card game). It's funny because all of us grew up with different familiar games, and you don't expect that someone will never have played go fish or some of the simpler games. One of my friends was absolutely awful at bluffing during bullshit, and she ended up holding over half the deck by the time we called it quits. It was great for laughs all around and just capped off a perfectly relaxing day spent in the company of friends with free time on our hands.

Me and Kayla in Trinity College, enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather

The duck that tried to steal my snack

An Unwelcome Welcome-Back to Cambridge

Sunday afternoon I got back to Cambridge, and after everything over the weekend I was exhausted. The plane had landed late because we ran into awful tubulence, and I had the seat right in front of the toilet and sat next to the only guy in the cabin who decided to stay awake all night reading, so I hadn't had any sleep on the plane. I slept for a few hours when I got back, and then headed over to meet up with a friend. I managed to get to sleep sometime around midnight or 1 without the jet lag keeping me awake too badly. At 3 am however, I woke to the most awful noise and light flashing in the window. One of my genius housemates (the same one involved in the meat incident) decided that it was a great time to take his motorcycle for a ride around the back garden and repeatedly rev the engine. He did that for about 10 minutes, and then his friends finally dragged him off. Things didn't get much better after that though, because he had about 15 or 20 people over in the kitchen in the basement and they were all screaming and being ridiculously loud for the early hour. Two of us went down to the basement to tell them to quiet down or leave, but within 15 minutes they were at it again, so we were forced to call the porters' lodge and have one of the porters come over to deal with the situation. By the time all of this was done, I was wide awake, and couldn't get to sleep until sometime after 5, needless to say, I was exhausted all day today.
At least my dissertation has been completely handed in, and I have no academic responsibilities remaining. That is a great feeling.

Pictures from the Achievement Summit

B.B. King playing at the Waldorf Astoria

Me, clowning around, with the tassles from the napkin holders on my ears, stylish don't you think?

Mayor Bloomberg speaking during our lunch at Gracie Mansion

Denzel Washington and James Earl Jones speaking about the importance of the arts

Ballet at Jazz at the Lincoln Center, watching the sun set over Central Park and the NY city skyline

My Whirlwind Weekend

I'm back in Cambridge, and I think my head is still spinning from everything that I saw and did over the past few days at the Academy of Achievement Summit in NYC. Nobel laureates, presidents of countries, famous film directors, public servants, authors, artists, musicians, banquets in 5 star hotels, jazz at the lincoln center watching the sun set over the city skyline, meeting other graduate students, sitting in the UN, the list goes on and on. I have never felt so inspired as I did listening to the stories of all these people who have been immensely successful in their chosen fields.
The final banquet was held at the Waldoff-Astoria, and was phenomenal. In between the appetizer and the main meal, B.B. King played a set that had everyone out of their chairs and dancing. The entertainment between the main course and dessert was John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. After dinner I met Colin Powell (rather short with us, "make it quick" when we asked to shake his hand), Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (spent time talking to everyone on his way out, frustrating his security detail as they tried to hurry him up), Naomi and Wynonna Judd (Wynonna sang with B.B. King), Sally Field, and countless others. At the reception after the dinner I had a long conversation with Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and his wife. I was completely amazed by how much many of these people were willing to give of themselves and share their time with mere graduate students.
In a small portion of my mind, however, I still felt a small cynical nagging that asked why they focused so much on the rewards of public service and yet we were surrounded by a level of opulence that I doubt most public servants would ever achieve. The weekend must have cost upwards of a couple million dollars, and if they had toned it down somewhat, I'm sure a donation of a million dollars would have had a large impact for a school district, or an arts program, or something else. However, I guess they view this as an investment in the future, and hope that the inspiration they provided us with (and I do feel inspired). It was a reminder that to whom much is given, much is expected.
I will say, that after listening to Attorney General Gonzalez, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the former CIA director George Tenet, I believe that the administration firmly believed that there was a threat from Iraq, and while we didn't have any insight into the President's decision thought process, I felt that their actions were made honestly and sincerely. The burden of history rests heavily on their shoulders, and as Tenet indicated, if he had made any decision but the one he thought was appropriate, he wouldn't be able to stand under the weight. None of them seemed burdened by anything more than the responsibility of serving their country.

John, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, and Me

Me, John and Colin Powell

Verdict = Incredible!

Okay, so wow. I mean wow. It's hard to describe this evening, other than to say that its now 0500 London time and I'm still absolutely wired. This evening was incredible. We went to the Met from the Peninsula (5 star) hotel we're staying at on 5th Ave, and had a talk by President Clinton, Katie Couric, Yogi Berra, and some other Academy of Achievement inductees. Yogi's advice to us was his classic "when you get to the fork in the road, take it." He had his medal presented by Roger Bannister (first sub 4 minute miler). Bill Clinton advised us to always think optimistically, because how can you expect to achieve if you are a pessimist, as he put it, "Roger Bannister didn't run a 4 minute mile by going out and thinking he would run it in 6."
After the talk, we had dinner in the Temple of Dendur, and wow, it was an incredible set up, and the food was pretty good too. Of course, it was strange to realize halfway through dinner that George Lucas was seated at the table next to mine. At the reception after dinner we were able to wander through a bit of the galleries, and while they were shooing us out at closing time, we actually had a good conversation with George Lucas regarding the influences of his films, his take on history and how it compared to the insurgency in Iraq, and the political insights into the new Star Wars movie. On the bus ride back to the hotel the women standing behind us asked what units we were headed to in the Army, and then introduced herself as Gen. Wesley Clark's wife. This is seriously such an incredible opportunity. My head is still reeling, although some of that is no doubt due to jet lag kicking in.

John and I at the Temple in the Met

With George Lucas

Second Time's the Charm

My dissertation has been printed and bound for the second time now, and I am much, much happier with the result. It just looks a lot more professionally done having been printed on a laser printer, and I went ahead and did the University/Judge crest in color, and that adds a nice touch to it also. And all's well that ends well, so considering that the dissertation is still all finished well in advance of the turn in date of next Monday the 6th, the minor headache of dealing with this is really fairly inconsequential. So now I'm off to London this evening for a night of theatre and then heading to New York for what should prove to be an incredible three and a half days.

Too Good to be True

I think I must have focused too much on how happy I felt to be finished. After returning from Staples (on cloud 9 I must say), I spent a bit of time sorting through the cosmetics/toiletries to complete my NYC packing, some time aimlessly surfing the internet, finished my last load of laundry and then had lunch. Then I decided to read through my dissertation again, just for kicks since it looked so nice all officially bound. Good thing I looked through the whole thing. Apparently they didn't realize I wanted the laser printer for my paper and did the printing from the copy machine/ink jet type printer. Which works fine for normal occurences, but when you're printing off a large volume of sheets the print heads start to leave ghost lines in the margins after about 20 pages, and it's a bit smeary and not quite the crisp, polished, professional look. So my morning work was rather undone, as I realized that I'd have to get it printed out on a laser printer since it seemed to cheapen the end result.
So now I have three unbound copies that have been printed out on a laser printer (after buying my own nicer paper and fending off the undergrads who thought that it was for communal use even though I clearly had brought it in my backpack). In the morning I'm going to go to the Graduate Union shop and have those copies bound, and then I will be finished with printing and binding for the second time. At least I did finish with enough time to rectify the problem, so all hope wasn't lost, but it was definitely frustrating and Murphy and his Law seemed ready to laugh in my face today.
On a positive note, since I have nothing but the second go-round of binding to do tomorrow, I decided that I'd go into London and catch the evening show of "The Woman in White." Unfortunately I didn't get in to see it in the fall when Michael Crawford was performing, but I still really wanted to see it, and since no one else seems to be finished yet and all my friends are quite buried under work, I decided that I'd go ahead and go by myself just because. Shoot, I'll consider it my 2 day late "happy one-year West Point graduation anniversary" if i have to come up with some way to legitimize it, but really I just wanted to have something to do tomorrow that will be fun. I am spoiling me, but why not? When's the next time I'll ever live in England:-)

Completely Finished

Printed and bound. My dissertation is completely finished. And boy oh boy, 45 pages is a lot thicker than I really imagined it would be. And now I have nothing to do for the rest of today or tomorrow since I am already packed for NYC. I can't believe I'm finished, and a full week before it is actually due!

Done! (Almost)

Ahhhhhh, I am oh so excited that I could scream. (In a good way, of course.) My dissertation is completely revised, edited - finished! At 15,193 words, and 45 pages (1.5 spaced, not double), this is the longest single piece of work that I have ever completed. Now all I have left to do is have it printed and bound, and then turn it in. But wow, this is such a great feeling (of course I'm hoping I feel this great after finding out results), and I think I will walk around all day tomorrow with a big old grin permanently plastered upon my face.

A Gorgeous Day

Today was amazing, I think it got up to 80 degrees here, I just read an article on the BBC that this is the hottest first day of the May Day weekend since sometime early in the 1950s, and it definitely topped out over 80 degrees in London. Since this is a record I suppose I can't expect too many more days as nice as this one, but I'm not going to think about that and enjoy the good weather as long as it lasts. I seriously found myself questioning whether I was still in England. I wasn't feeling up to doing much of anything because my hayfever of a few days ago turned into a full out head/sinus cold. There's just something wrong about being sick when it's so nice outside, but that was the situation I found myself in today. However, I tried not to let that stop me, and I took a blanket and my laptop out into the back garden (aka back yard, but the Brits call it a garden, even though there's nary a flower in sight), and worked for about an hour revising my thesis. If tomorrow is as nice, I think I'll be back out there again, and maybe even feel brave enough to break out the swim suit to get a bit of a tan. The five minute rain shower that sent me running back inside was enough however, to remind me that I was still in the UK, and the weather can be incredibly unpredictable, since it stayed clear after that brief spot of rain.
I took a bit of time to run to the library, well walk, okay, meander through town and check out the stores on my way over and eventually end up at the library before it closed. There were so many people out and about in town today, the good weather seemed to have kicked everyone outside, and boy, body image must be a lot different over here, based on some of what I saw the different people wearing, I could get away with daisy duke shorts and a tube top, because there were people with figures much worse than mine wearing that. I mean, confidence is good, but I think after today I am definitely of the opinion that there can be such a thing as having too much self-confidence, especially when it crosses the line into bad taste. Oh well, the weather was so nice that I'm inclined to be forgiving, because I found myself wishing I'd worn a tank top because it was HOT!
I am thanking my lucky stars that I bought an electric fan a few weeks ago when it had been semi-warm, because one of the stores that I went into today was out of fans. I miss air conditioning, although I suppose that at least after four years at West Point I'm used to not having the AC, but I am definitely going to keep AC high on my list of things that I want from any apartment that I end up in next year. Although I don't know where I'll end up in Germany, so I may not have much choice about apartments if they make me live on post in a BOQ. But all of that is in the future and I'm not going to worry about that until I have to.
I have one small sectin to add to my dissertation and then I'm finished. I was able to get two of the three suggested corrections accomplished today, and should be able to finish the final correction tomorrow, which means on Sunday I'll print out a last copy to check over for final revisions, and then on Monday I can take the completed dissertation to the local Staples shop and have it printed and bound. I know I've explained all this before, but I'm just so over the top happy about the prospect of having it finished that I can't contain myself. Especially since at this rate I'll have it all completed a week before it's actually due - although that doesn't really count as a full week since I'll be leaving for NYC on Wednesday and won't get back until Sunday afternoon, and it is due next Monday.
So despite the fact that I was sick today, I still was able to enjoy some of the good weather, and that cheered me up considerably. The next thing I have to do is pack for NYC, and anyone who knows me will know how much I hate packing for anything, so I'm putting that one off for as long as I can. At least it should be fairly easy because I won't need anything but my class A's, a ball gown, and an outfit for the plane rides, but I'm sure I'll find some way to make it all turn into a mess and forget something that I need.

Good News!

I've been feeling under the weather the last couple days, and I've been a bit snappish, and I think I realized that part of that was due to waiting to hear back results from my supervisor on my thesis. The deadline is so close, and I think not knowing what he was going to say was really starting to bother me, because if he said it was rubbish there wasn't going to be much else that I could do to improve it with the amount of time that I have left.
However, I finally just got an email from him, and it definitely should relieve some tension since he said he found it an "excellent piece of work." Obviously I've managed to pull the wool over his eyes! He suggested I add in one more theory on decision making, and describe the process by which I categorized the interviews a bit more, but other than that he thought it was ready for submission with the addition of those few things! So at least I have a focused plan of attack for the weekend, since 3 days should be more than enough time to make the suggested changes. And on Monday I should be able to take it to Staples and have it printed and bound. It's going to be quite a relief to not have it hanging over my head when I go to New York on Wednesday for the Achievement Summit.
It's also good news that he liked it, because the dissertation will be graded by two individuals, one of which is my supervisor, so I'm relieved to know that at least one of the markers will like it, and chances are the other one should as well since my supervisor approves. I wish I could go back and reclaim some of those sleepless nights when I panicked about whether I would actually finish or not. It looks like everything is going to work out, and withluck, I'll have my master's degree in July!! Unbelievable!

The Same Conversation... Over & Over

I suppose that I'm really starting to feel like I'm beginning to be an adult, if only because of the number of conversations revolving around marriage that I have had in the past two weeks. I don't know where they all cropped up out of the blue, but it started by hearing that a few people I knew from West Point were now engaged or married, and then it turns out a couple people from my program here are thinking about getting engaged, and WHAM the flood gates opened up.
I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum here in Cambridge after meeting a friend over at the Judge, since its right across the street, and we linked up with one of her friends. Somehow, her friend started commenting on whether or not the male subjects 18th and 19th centurty paintings were attractive - although I quickly pointed out that by now they were mouldering somewhere, which she didn't find too funny. From there, she started talking about how she just wanted to find a husband and have children, and my friend chimed right in agreeing with her. Not that I don't want any of that, I just was hit more by the realization that I was having this conversation with people my age. I mean, I know people from West Point are already married, and everything, but I had never really had this conversation.
And since then, I think I have repeated this conversation at various points in time with at least four or five other people. It just seems like such an adult thing to do (be thinking about marriage and families), and I don't feel old enough (which isn't a problem, since it's not happening any time in the near future).
It's not really anything life shattering, but it's just come up so often that it really got on my mind, and then I was watching Bridget Jones 2, and there's a scene when she's looking at her tombstone saying spinster, and her birth year was 1972, and it made me wonder if I'd be a Bridget Jones type person in 10 years. Well I guess here's hoping I find my Mark Darcy. :-)

A Little Over a Month

Things are really starting to come to a close over here. Dissertations are handed in on 6 June, which is just a week and a half away. I have a date for when the movers will be here to pick up my stuff - 28 June, and have just signed my tenancy termination agreement for leaving on 2 July. Now all I need is my plane ticket and I'm set to go. Amazing.

You Never Know...

I suppose one of the things that I've learned from posting my thoughts on the blog this year, is that you never know who is going to read them. There have been people who have mentioned reading something, and I'm surprised because I would never have imagined that they would have, and there are times that I feel like I'm writing for myself (it's a bit therapeutic to vent), so it doesn't really matter who reads it. I am slightly curious who all reads this, but it might be disappointing to know that hardly anyone does ;-)

I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do with the blog now that I'll be finishing here, "Heather at Cambridge" doesn't quite work, but maybe I'll just keep the same address and change the name, or maybe I'll change the address to something else. So many decisions, and of course none of them are really that pressing or important, but I am at my wits end today from sheer boredom because my supervisor is currently in possession of my first draft of my dissertation, most of my friends here are deeply engrossed in their own papers, and it was pouring down rain for a good part of the day. In short, I found myself cooped up in my room with a grand sum and total of nothing to do. Wasting time is so easy when I have work that needs to be done, but suddenly, when I have all the time in the world, I can't find anything to fill up all the free hours. Which is why I find myself wondering who actually reads this (maybe anyone who does could leave a comment or something to that effect...), whether I'm going to continue once I leave here (thinking yes, just wondering what to do about the name), and why I can't make time go by any faster. Just a little over a month left in England, and then 5 months at Ft. Leonard Wood, then a bit of time at home, then off to Germany (or at least thats the current plan). It's hard to believe in 8 days that I will have been out of West Point for a year. Time flies...unless you have nothing to do, like today :-) At last I used up 15 minutes typing this.