FML

Last day to turn in Thanksgiving Pass: 13 November. Day I turned in my Thanksgiving Pass: 13 November. Along with a whole line of other lieutenants turning in passes. Day I discovered that they LOST my Thanksgiving Pass: today, 19 November. Thank you, D Co. personnel. Now instead of going home to visit my family like I told them I would be, I get to stay here in Middle-of-nowhere, Alabama, working at the D Co. Staff Duty Desk. Thanks a fucking lot.

Fuck my life.

When I become a captain, I will not refuse to speak to a lieutenant on the phone because I am "too busy" and instead force said lieutenant to return to the post after being released for the day to speak to me about their issue. If I really am busy, I'll answer my phone my fucking self, instead of having someone else screen my calls for me, I'll make sure it's not an emergency, and I'll promise the LT to call them back as soon as I can.

Additionally, if I ever have a lieutenant show up saying that their pass that they turned in the week prior has been lost by someone in my office, I'll actually try to help find what happened, instead of saying "Sucks to be her." And yeah, that's a direct quote.

You know, when I can hear the one CPT talking in the background of the phone call about non-work-related stuff, and when the other guy says something like that well within my range of hearing, all I can conclude is that they're a pair of lazy fucking shitbags who can't be assed to help anybody else. Never mind that that's what officers are supposed to do. There's not many things that'll make you feel like your life is worthless like your superior officers basically saying "fuck you" and refusing to help. My opinion of flight school just keeps getting lower and lower...

Names ommitted because, you know, CYA...

Halloween

Happy Halloween and all that jazz. It was actually pretty damned fun this year for me :)

I wound up going to dinner with some of my friends here, to a place called the Mellow Mushroom. It's a pretty good pizza place that I first went to at Ft Benning, so I was happy to find one here in tiny little Enterprise. I wound up taking half of my pizza home, which was a good thing later on.

After dinner we went to the liquor store to stock up for a party that we were apparently going to, and then to Walmart to buy juice and some costumes. There wasn't much in the way of costumes left, so we decided to do me up as a devil (thanks to the one set of devil's horns that we found left in the costume aisle). We decided that since most women's costumes are slutty nowadays, I may as well hop on the bandwagon, so I was basically just going to go in a long-sleeved button down and a pair of boy-shorts underwear. It was, however, really fucking cold last night (compared to how warm it usually is around here, anyway...) so I wound up wearing a pair of pants during the whole party (it was also kind of awkward being around a bunch of people I didn't know in my underwear...).

Post-party we went back to my friend Aric's place to play some Rock Band and crash out. It wound up being strip Rock Band (a first for me :p), but we all mutually agreed that we'd stop at underwear (the guys were of the opinion that they had no desire to see each other fully naked). It was surprisingly fun, actually... it was also a long enough game that I was no longer toasted by the time we went to sleep, which made the hangover this morning much nicer. Pizza in the morning was also amazing :p

At some point yesterday, the group discovered that I'd never been on a date or had a boyfriend before, so Nestor announced that if Aric didn't ask me on a date in the near future, he would. Surprise surprise, Aric mentioned something about it when he dropped me off back at my place this morning, and texted me later to set up a time to go out to dinner tonight. I told him he didn't actually have to take me out on a date, but he responded that "he thought it would be fun, plus he kina wanted to ask me out anyway". I honestly wasn't sure if he was being serious or not, since we've been friends for a few years now and are always joking around with each other, so I gave a "lol"-ish reply just in case.

He went out and bought me flowers, which was sweet of him (I have to remember to buy a vase for them though). Dinner was at a Japanese steakhouse in the area, which was pretty good. I'm not the best person at small talk (I used to be pretty anti-social before college, and I'm still kind of socially awkward I think), so a one-on-one dinner was a little strange for me at some times. What do you talk about while you're on a date with someone you talk to pretty much every day anyway? There's never anything new here in Enterprise to talk about, so conversations get limited sometimes :p

Post-date, he walked me to the door so I invited him in (which kind of made me chuckle since he doesn't generally bother asking permission, and I rarely knock when I show up at his place now either :p) and we wound up watching a Youtube clip of "Legends of the Hidden Temple", an old Nickelodeon show that he got his Halloween costume from (and which I didn't think I'd ever seen, but now I'm not sure). Then we wound up watching the Military Channel for a while (which is sad for a couple of lieutenants, in retrospect). Then he got up to go, and I got a couple of good-night kisses :p I actually wasn't sure if he was going to kiss me or just give me a hug, since I still wasn't sure if he was serious about the date or not. I did get kisses and a couple hugs though, and he said we should do this again so... I have a boyfriend now? Maybe? I used to laugh at books or movies where the girl was always overanalyzing whether or not a guy liked her, but I get it now :p I'm 99% sure that he wouldn't have actually kissed me if he wasn't serious, but since a guy has never asked me out before, I guess I've kind of built up a mental image of myself as an "undate-able" person... the kind of girl guys hang out with but don't go out with I guess. Add that to the oddness of how he asked me out, and I guess I'm hesitant to jump into this thinking I've suddenly got a boyfriend now. *sigh* We'll see if there's actually a second date I guess?

Aaanyway. In Army news, I'm on SDO (Staff Duty Officer) detail for the next 2 weeks, so I don't have to go to formations :) No PT, whoo! I need to PT on my own if I'm not going to go to morning formation, of course, but I've never been that good at self-motivating to work out...

I'm also going to try to go to the Inspector General's (IG) office tomorrow, to finally sort out whatever the hell is wrong with my status in the army database - apparently I'm listed as active duty now, but I'm still not seeing it on my end :( So instead of doing the run-around with the S1 and student personnel here at Ft Rucker, I'm just going to take my problem straight to the IG, and hopefully get it fixed in time to register for classes for next semester (I can't really afford to pay for another semester out of pocket, so it's either fix the problem and sign of for Tuition Assistance, or take a semester off).

And... that's it I guess. Yay Enterprise.

Edit: 2nd date, in honor of him passing a miserable land navigation course and having a successful convoy mission. Dinner was at a Brazilian steakhouse, and it was good (my brother actually took me there when he came up to help me move in). I think we've exhausted the supply of nice restaurants in Enterprise though... so now I have to get creative for when I invite him out to dinner one of these nights :p

And I never did go to the IG... *sigh*

Edit 2: I still haven't gone to IG, but I do indeed have a boyfriend.

Windows 7

I... do not like the way this interface looks. Specifically, the taskbar at the bottom. More specifically, the massively large buttoms at the bottom. Hopefully there's a way to make them smaller, because I don't want to have to get used to it, since it's ugly. It took me friggin' forever to upgrade this damned OS, too. Kaspersky was fucking it up apparently, even though I turned the program off before starting the upgrade. I'm going to make a restore point and then try to reinstall Kaspersky, and hopefully it doesn't fuck this up :p

Other than that... I have cable now, but I'm still watching Criminal Minds episodes anyway.

Flight schol is boring (since I'm not actually starting flight school yet...), and I wish someone in my family would come visit... I'm going to wind up going home for Thanksgiving, but so far the only person who's come up here is my brother, who came to help me move stuff in and to hang out for a couple days.

Getting paid to do nothing is surprisingly boring. Blah.

Mother Rucker

So, yeah, I obviously didn't post about my weekend in Naperville. Not because it was a bad weekend or anything, but because I simply got too lazy to bother posting.


So, we'll start with Naperville. It was an ok weekend. Got to see my mom and two of my brothers (yeah, I have four of them :p). My older brother adopted a new puppy (who was sick and skin and bones then but is healthy and apparently doubled in size as of her vet visit a day ago :p), and she is absolutely adorable. Her photo is the one up at the top. The next two are Charlie (my brother's first dog, and a complete daddy's boy) and Kit (one of my mom's two dogs, and a complete momma's boy :p). I do wish that the weekend had been longer, or that it hadn't been a competition weekend (aka a "work" weekend for my mom). Didn't get to hang out and have some quality mother-daughter time like I was hoping :-/







Anyway... the last couple weeks of Fort Sham passed by pretty much the same way as the rest of the time there - easy and boring, for the most part. I'm still not active duty according to the Army database, and apparently that was a big enough fuckup that it had to be sent to the DA to be fixed *sigh*

Oh well, at least BOLC III is over... now on to my real BOLC III! That's right folks, I have (finally) arrived at Fort Rucker. I have my own apartment here (2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, all to myself), which is nice except now I actually have to grow up and pay bills :( And buy furniture, which is a hell of a lot more expensive than I'd expected... Thus far my life has consisted of PT in the morning (which lasts from the 0615 formation until around 0700... what a joke...) and inprocessing. Now I have Permissive TDY (PTDY) starting after PT Monday, which means 10 days of not having to do anything and still getting paid! So I'm going to stay here long enough for my internet to be hooked up Monday (I'm hijacking a neighbor's right now) and for my furniture to be set up Tuesday, and then I'm headed home until the 6th.

In other exciting news, apparently I'm entitled to BAH (housing pay) for part of the time I was at Fort Sam, which means my paycheck next Weds. will have an extra $700 tacked onto it... plus the $719 for this next month's housing that I haven't been drawing yet. In short, the paycheck will be double what I usually make :) Additionally, my travel voucher will wind up being approximately $2000, which I should be getting deposited to my bank account towards the end of this upcoming week. Hallelujah for paying off the credit card (which I pretty much maxed out to buy furniture) and restocking my checking account (which I wiped out paying rent and buying groceries and curtains). Yes, I bought curtains. I bought blackout curtains, which I fully expect to lower the cost of my electricity bills, so no need for "housewife" jokes, thanks :p

And while I'm speaking about decorating my house, check out the paintings I bought in New Orleans to hang on my walls!

I was going to paint the walls too, but then I discovered how expensive paint is, and I decided that it wasn't worth it for a year-and-a-half-long stay. Instead of painting, I'm probably just going to invest in some comfy throw rugs that match the curtains (which match the paintings). Yes, I picked different rooms for the paintings so that I could color-coordinate curtains and such. I like art and like things matching, so sue me :p

OH, and in case anyone is curious about the oils, the lady's website is here: http://raganarts.com/RaganArts/Ragan_Arts.html

Argh, Graduate School

FML. And that's all I really have to say about deciding to start some online Master's courses this semester. Just... FML.

In other news, we've begun the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) portion of BOLC III. I'm torn between enjoying the work, wanting to gouge my eyes out with a pencil at the mind-numbingness of the work, and wanting to beat my head repeatedly against a desk at having to work with other people to produce an OPORD. I blame being the Bn XO in ROTC for that last bit... :p

And in OTHER other news, it's the f-in weekend! Hell yeah! Thank God for training holidays, because we have a 4-day weekend now :) That means only a 4-day and a 3-day week, and then GRADUATION!!! And I get to make the 13-hour drive to Fort Rucker to move into my first apartment ever XD

This weekend I'm headed to Napervill, IL (I think I already mentioned this once...) and I expect it to be a blast. Not the least because it's going to be NICE weather there! Like, highs in the mid-70s instead of the low 100s!!! w00t! I will actually have an excuse to wear a sweater at night! And, ya know, hanging out with family is always fun :) I'm going to try to convince my brother to wear a Superman cape (the one I got at 6 Flags last weekend) while he competes :p

Anyway, have to go beat my brain against my homework (HOMEWORK!!! FML. Again.) now, so will update on Monday or Tuesday probably about how the weekend went.

Let's Kill Some Nazis

So, "survived" field week here at Fort Sham. The worst part about it was no showers (but we still got all sweaty and nasty at 6am doing PT, nevermind that it's over 100 degrees here so we're getting pretty disgusting during the day anyway :p) The training itself wasn't too bad though; easy for the most part, although I did more infantry-type stuff than medical stuff, much to my disappointment. Not hard or physically demanding infantry stuff (although we did get a surprise 4-mile ruck to the FOB on Monday :p), but worthless nonetheless (mind you, the majority of BOLC 3 is worthless for a future MEDEVAC pilot, but nobody here needs practice manning a guard tower or sitting all day in a security perimeter. Honestly.)

General pointlessness of the field exercise aside, at least we had quotes from Inglourious Basterds to tide us over. That movie is by far the best I've seen all Summer, even topping Hangover. I didn't know going into it that it was supposed to be at least partially funny, and that was a great surprise. I also wasn't expecting it to have a decent plot (I've seen a lot of movies this summer with horrible - or no - plots, so I was expecting the usual), so that was also a nice surprise. Yeah, I know, it was a completely unrealistic plot, but any idiot knows that Hitler wasn't shot to death in a movie theater, so the rest can be forgiven, in my opinion. There were some inconsistencies, but nothing that made me dislike the movie in any way. So long as you don't mind some blood and gore and beating people to death with baseball bats, I'd recommend this movie to pretty much anyone.

That said, went to Six Flags yesterday. Favorite rollercoasters: Superman (all four of us got Superman capes and wore them every time we went on the ride - geeky, I know, but fun) and Poltergeist (0 to 60mph in 3.8 seconds, hell YES!). No real "least favorite" coasters, although the Rattler certainly lived up to its name (but what did I expect from a massive wooden rollercoaster? And I only smashed my head into Jay's shoulder about three times, so it's ok...)

Next weekend: Naperville, IL, for the Ashley Whippet disc dog competition with my mom and brothers! Whoo! We also realized this weekend that we have no more 5-day weeks left here at BOLC 3 - two 4-days and a 3-day! AND I finally got my orders to flight school, so I can head straight to AL when I'm done here and move into my apartment! Good news all around :)

Transformers 2, Harry Potter, and what the hell else did I watch this summer?

Whoo! Another post that's NOT Army-related! (Yeah, you're about to get spammed with movie posts, lol).

Transformers 2: I... was not impressed by this movie. The plot sucked (which I expected the instant I saw the previews: "Sam, there is much we haven't told you." Ok, that's the sign they were just scrambling to make a sequel). The CG was good, as per usual, but that's pretty much all I liked. I wasn't really even impressed by the few fight scenes :-/ And the twin Autobots were just annoying. As was the bot-in-a-box, as I've decided to call it. If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. The scene I liked the most: When the corporate asshole is conned into pulling the ripcord and gets sucked out of the plane. Brilliant.

Harry Potter: Another disappointment. The book was my least favorite of the series anyway, and the movie was a letdown even from that. It evoked no emotion in me whatsoever. I actually almost laughed when Dumbledore died, because it was so horribly anticlimatic.

Public Enemies: Ok, a lot of people complained about this movie because it had a bad plot, too many plots, etc etc. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. No real reason why... just enjoyed the casting, enjoyed the shootouts, enjoyed the period it was written in. And Johnny Depp :p

Hangover: saw this at Benning, and it was funny as hell. Way more penis-shots in it than I really wanted to see (wouldn't have been bad if they were hot, but... they weren't, so it was a little un-cool). Hilarious enough that I'll probably buy it eventually.

GI Joe: Oh god, what can I say about this incredibly shitty movie? The CG was good? My expectations were so low anyway that it wasn't too much of a letdown? I just... don't even want to talk about it. The theater we went to was awesome though! It's this place called the Alamo Drafthouse, which serves dinner with your movie. And alcohol. The service was a little slow, but Jay says that's pretty unusual for them, so we probably just caught a bad day.

The Hurt Locker: I... am surprised that some people really like this movie. Sooo many of the fans are like "yeah, it's inconsistent, but that's the point, that he does what he isn't supposed to!" Um... yeah, maybe that's the point, but it still should fall within some bounds of realism. First sign that the movie was going to suck completely: it was set in 2004, and everyone was wearing ACUs, which weren't fielded until 2005. A test run was done with one of the BCTs in late 2004, but definitely not *everyone* would have been wearing the damned things. Then you have the EOD Humvee driving by itself everywhere. Um, no. That doesn't happen, even if someone is playing cowboy out there. Then you have EOD clearing the area instead of the Infantry. The Infantry would have already cleared the area before EOD showed up... so there wouldn't even be an opportunity for that to happen. Shootout in the middle of the desert? Those EOD guys won't outshoot the contractors. Guaranteed. And once again, that Humvee is flying solo out there in the middle of nowhere. By the way, where did that scene even fit into the (admittedly spotty) plot? EOD team clearing the neighborhood in their 3-man team, which then split up so each guy was going solo? Sorry, but even if the Tech was playing cowboy there, his teammates would certainly not have followed him into such an idiotic situation. He probably would have been tackled to the ground and stopped. Leaving the post with the vendor, and being allowed back in by saying he was at a whorehouse? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he'd have been in some serious shit. Pretty positive you can't just walk back into a FOB and have the gate guard forget about it without anyone in the chain of command hearing about the incident. Way too many people watching for that to fly. There was so much more... but I'll settle for saying that the song the Tech was listening to when he first arrived, Fear (is Big Business) by Ministry, kicks ass (even if it is incredibly anti-government).

We're probably going to go see Inglorious Bastards when it comes out, and go to Six Flags next weekend. Fun stuff :p