I feel fine.

Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning
and I find myself careening,
in places where I should not let me go.
She has the power to go where no one else can find me
and to silently remind me
of the happiness and good times that I know

It isn't what She's got to say,
but how she thinks and where She's been.
To me the words are nice the way they sound.
I like to hear the best that way,
it doesn't much matter what they mean.
She says them mostly just to calm me down.

And I feel fine anytime She's around me now,
and She's around me now, almost all the time.
And if I'm well you can tell that She's been with me now,
She's been with me now, quite a long long time.
And I feel fine.

I've been married for one year, and I'm spending my anniversary over 3000 miles away from my wife. People ask why I'm not going to stay in the military after my first enlistment is up, and that's the reason. I don't want to worry about if I'm going to be in another country for Thanksgiving or Christmas or my anniversary or my wife's birthday. I'll be happy when I can go home every day from work to my own house and see my wife and tell her that she's the best thing that ever happened to me. Until then I'll keep focusing on the reasons that made me decide to join the military in the first place.

The Writing on the Wall

I've heard the expression "I can read the writing on the wall" before but, to be honest, I've never understood exactly what it means. However today I had a literal experience with reading the writing on the wall:

The port-o-shitters on camp have always been, and always will be, a blank canvas for the expressionist writings of the common man. While on FEX the heartbeat of the battallion can be read while relieving yourself. Here in Kuwait you can tell if the Army sucks dick, if the Marines suck dick, or if the Air Force takes it in the ass. You can find out who's mom is the best in bed and which units are the "baddest mother fuckers." This morning after breakfast I heard the call of nature and went to the nearest plastic palace to answer it. Written in friendly block letters above the urinal was the phrase:

"SMILE, because tomorrow will be worse"

Whoever wrote that up there did indeed make me smile.

Fresh Fish

This morning the reserve battallion we were working with left camp to go back home.
A few hours ago their replacements arrived.

And they didn't send another EA...
Meaning that there are two of us here trying to get more work than any other camp (probably anybody in battallion) done. Which means that standing by and watching 2-2 fuck his way through project after project doing things the hard way, taking no responsibility for any mistakes but taking full credit for anything done correctly, isn't going to work anymore.

I told some of the people here a thought I have and I think it's true.

The more EA's I work with, the more I realize that I'm better than them at our job.

I don't this makes me look good, I think it makes all of us look bad. When a second class can't answer simple questions about work that he did 3 hours ago out on a project, but instead answers "I would have to go look at what I did today to tell you" that is unacceptable. If you want to style yourself as "Engineering Support" for projects, and look down on everyone around you because you think that you are smarter than them, then you'd better be able to remember shit that you did throughout the course of the day.

This sort of changed course from my original idea and turned into a rant, but I don't really give a shit.

On practicing what you preach.

I have a t-shirt that I bought at a thrift store in high-school. The shirt is white with a picture of 5 superheroes in a group pose with the words "be a math action hero" underneath.
An EO1 with the reserve battallion up here is also an NYPD cop. When he gets back home next month he wants to take an exam to get a better job in a better part of New York, but he needs to have 30 college credits to do so. At the learning center on base they have college classes, and also the option to take CLEP exams and earn credit on the spot.
He came up to me last week and said "hey, I need you to teach me math"

So right now I'm sitting in the dispatch office 2 hours after the workday ended, teaching EO1 Algebra to the best of my ability.

Wish I had a cape.

On Fire

On Monday, while driving back from a project, our HMMWV (Hummer) caught fire. It was pretty awesome.

EA 2-2 was driving, which was also awesome.

Here's the story:

There were 3 people riding in the back of the truck and 2 up in the cab when suddenly we pulled over and the guy riding shotgun jumped out and started smelling bags, camelbacks, whatever he could to try and determine the source of a burning smell. As he was smelling around 2-2 pointed out that smoke was coming from underneath the floor of the cab. We all looked down and saw it was coming up through the bed of the Humvee also.
Upon closer inspection we could also see small flames through the drain holes and various other gaps in the floor of the truck. I immediately started throwing tools out of the back of the vehicle (they were checked out in my name and damn if I'll pay for 2 burnt up shovels) and told the a-driver to grab the fire extinguisher.
He passed it up to me while everyone else in back of the truck climbed out, and as I was blasting powder into the floor trying to figure out where the fire was coming from a-driver started shouting "The gas tank's on fire! The gas tank's on fire!"

I had no idea I could jump out of the back of a Humvee so fast.

Once I hit the ground I confirmed that, yes, the fuel tank was the source of the burning, so everyone backed way up and I called UMCC to have him call the fire department and tell them our vehicle was on fire right next to the base fuel depot.

This was the second fire the Seabees have been behind so far this deployment and I must say, the department responded much faster when they heard the fire was by nearly 30,000 gallons of fuel.

In the end nobody was hurt, no equipment except for the HMMWV was damaged and I ended up with a great deployment story.

Plus 2-2 was driving and there is no way that the fire could be my fault.

No Surveying Without Representation

I staged a mini-strike today.

The head of my shop, and "lead EA" for the det handed me a set of prints and asked me to go set out stakes for a ditch this morning.
No Problem.

Upon arrival at the site, I noticed in the title block of the prints it said his name in the following blocks:
Designed By- alright
Drawn By- alright
Surveyed By- wait a second....

Upon realization that he was taking credit for the survey work that I was doing, I stopped.
I took elevation shots that the Equipment Operators needed to start their project on Thursday.
I looked at the plans and the project that I was supposed to survey.
But I didn't put out a single stake.

Maybe it's vanity, but if I'm the one doing the surveying for a project (and I always am, I call myself the lead EA and him the "Office Manager") I would like recognition for my work, because I know that if something is wrong he'll put the blame on me, but if it comes out perfect (which it never does in Kuwait but nobody cares) I won't get any of the credit.

I refuse to do any more work to get Office Manager a medal.

On Hedgehogs and other creatures.

One good thing about working nights in the desert is: all the critters are out and about.

One bad thing about working nights in the desert is: all the critters are out and about.

A few nights ago while surveying a road for our camp my partner and I found ourselves outside of the inner berm of camp. This is actually a nice place to work because nobody drives by you except security and nobody bothers you because usually nobody can find you. It also means that it's easier to find critters because they're not constantly being chased into their holes by traffic or people walking about.

I told the E-3 who works with me that if he ever saw a hedgehog we would catch it because I heard that they eat scorpions (my biggest desert fear). That night, right after I set up my tripod and instrument he calls me over the radio saying "Check it out" so I go running up to the fence only to see a little hedgehog making his way through the concertina wire.

After a few pokes from the wire and a few pokes from the hedgehog we managed to snatch him up and drop him into my hardhat. One of the guys suggested I name him water and when I asked why he replied "because that's what he's gonna leave in your hardhat" so water got his name.

Since we weren't actually planning on doing any work, I stood around holding water for a good few hours while I had my next wildlife encounters. First some wild dogs came by and sniffed the spot right where I found water, leading me to believe I couldn't put him back there for fear of him being eaten (we'd already seen a dead hedgehog the week before). Later after one humvee went to get more fuel and pick up some stuff we'd forgotten, I saw my first camel spider.

The camel spider is gross, and fast, that's all I have to say about them.

Finally as we were getting ready to head in for the night, I put water back down on the ground and let him find his own way in life. Hopefully he is still alive.