RCC

RCC

It’s been my experience that when the training schedule states that our day will be spent at the Riley Convention Center that it won’t be a day of “good training”. Instead, it will be a duel to the death with the sleep monster and let me tell you my friends, he is a powerful adversary. He has claimed victory over many of my comrades in our prior engagements at the RCC, but by the grace of my friends the Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish and Coca Cola (or the sugar and caffeine they contain), I have not fallen victim to his lullaby attack of stupefied unconsciousness. Okay, maybe I have had the heavy eyes or the head bob now and then and maybe CPT Kevin had to give me a chop to the ribs to keep me from completely succumbing to a full blown upright nap, but I stayed awake, for the most part, to get this valuable training the Army felt that I needed to survive in theater.

I don’t want to trivialize these briefings because it is semi-good information that they are putting out. I can’t help but feel like I’m repeating myself as I try to simultaneously praise and bash the training that they are feeding us. They call it “foundation training” in which they try to tell us a little bit about what the unit we are replacing does in theater and how they fit in the big picture so that we’ll glean some insight of what we’ll be doing when we replace them. Great information, but it would have been nice to get some of this about 6 weeks ago when we were asking ourselves what our jobs were and what in the heck we were doing here. Despite the 8 hours of briefings today I can honestly say that I still don’t have a clue as to what in the heck I’ll be doing. They have us scheduled for 3 more days of this stuff. And to add to the kick in the manhood that we are already receiving, they are slapping us with some night briefings that force us to shove others out of the way in the dinner chow line so that we can make these all important meetings on time. Where was this motivation 6 weeks ago?

The one kernel of good information that I found in the dump truck of fecal matter that they labeled “briefings” today was some good info that I can’t write about since its all secret squirrel stuff. The highlights that I can talk about are the pizza we had for lunch and changing the tire on a Hummer. One good, one bad. Are you feeling the whole ying and yang vibe? I know I am.

Pics of MSG Tim and CPT Brendan. Notice the choppers and the BIG calculator.

On another note, I have some friends of mine who are watching my pet crabs. Yes, that’s right folks... I have crabs. Long story on how I got the hermit crabs, but I’ll save that one for another time. The gist of it is that one is molting, which is a little stressful for the little buggers, not to mention a little weird for the people who witness it as it can look pretty bad. Being foster parents who have only a brief history of managing a “crabitat” and it’s occupants, they are doing a great job of keeping me up to date. Let’s hope for a successful molt and that they don’t get too freaked out.