Michelle!

Last weekend my sister, Michelle, came to visit. I'd forgotten how much I miss living 20 minutes from her until she came to stay with me. I picked her up from Reagan airport in DC on Thursday and after grabbing a quick bite to eat, we fought the traffic to get home.

Friday, I took her to Virginia Beach. After walking the shoreline collecting seashells for Brooklyn and writing in the sand, we found a place to sit and enjoy the ocean view and sun. I'm not really sure what happened next, because I fell asleep. I'm getting pretty good at falling asleep anytime, anywhere. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.


Late afternoon we rented a two-seater bike and peddled our happy backsides down the length of the boardwalk and back. I figured it up; we probably walked about 3 miles and biked 5 that day. It seriously was exhausting, but fun.

Saturday we took a day of rest, sort of. We went out and bought me a crock pot and groceries and made a lot of food for me to freeze so that I can eat proper dinners now. It was Michelle's idea and it was a good one, cuz I've been eating like a queen every night this week. YUM!

On Sunday, I had to take Michelle back to DC, so we got up kind of early so we could see the city before her flight left. We walked the length of the National Mall, seeing the Capitol, Washington Monument, the White House and much, much more. The time with my sissy ended much too quickly but I'm so glad she came.



This week in school, we've been studying ammo; it's actually decently interesting. Tomorrow I'm going to DC again with a group to see the MLK Jr Monument and whatever else they have planned. And that brings you up to speed with me. So what's new with you?

Recovery and Hot Wiring

The week after the field, we learned the basics of recovering a vehicle using the wrecker. Then we got to do a hands-on application of what we learned. That was a fun day, let me tell ya. At first I tried to get involved, but it's really only about a 5-man team and there are 34 of us, so after standing around for a bit, I sat in the cab with the driver, my friend Caroline.


It was cool though. We took a turned over HMMWV and hooked chains up to it and used the Wrecker to get the vehicle right-side up so we could move it and CM (continue mission, or charlie mike). This process probably took us about an hour, but in real life, it only takes the experts about 15 minutes.


Also during this week, I had a minor issue with my car. Apparently there was a manufacturer recall; however, since I've had five different addresses in the past nine months, I must have missed the recall memo. So as I pulled into my parking lot one night, I put the car in park and went to turn the car off like normal. Except my key didn't turn. It just sat there. Running. There was a minute there where I'd actually thought I'd went crazy or stupid and had completely forgotten how to operate my car.


After sitting there befuddled for a bit, I drove to Caroline's house to have her car-expert boyfriend take a look at it. He couldn't fix it, but he did show me how to unhook my car from the steering column, so I could at least shut it off for the night. Basically he taught me how to hot wire my own car. Luckily the problem was fixed the next day.

SWFTX

Clearly I'm not a dedicated blogger, so I'm going to try and catch you all up to speed with the last few weeks. I'll keep the posts short so you don't get too bored.

A couple of weeks ago, our class got the opportunity to go out to the field with AIT students (Privates). The goal of this exercise was to simulate being on a FOB (Foreign Operating Base) in Afghanistan. We ran convoys, live fire training, urban operations and . haha Basically it was a week of no showers and early mornings and late nights in full battle rattle (helmets, bullet-proof vests, FLCs-to hold all our ammo and canteens, and an M16 rifle).

It was actually a really fun time, but I must say, there were a little too many chiefs and not enough Native Americans...(keeping it PC). For each Platoon of AIT Soldiers, there were 2 or 3 lieutenants. This obviously created communication issues and was kind of irritating at times, but the important thing was the AIT Soldiers got some almost real-life experience and we got to practice our leadership skills.

Oh and just fyi, at the end of the week, the NCOs out there helping us got to choose two AIT Soldiers to be the Log Warriors. Now, I don't really know what that is, but it means something to the Privates, so I'm proud to say that one of the Soldiers from my platoon was chosen as a Log Warrior. I take his success to be a reflection of my leadership during that week...