update; week 14 (or 8/16)

military update

Current mood: awake

at some point, i was supposed to start an e-bulletin for everyone once i got settled at AIT, to keep everyone updated with the cool shenanigans here...

well, i didn't, and there aren't really any cool shenanigans to report on.

it's been about... forever... more or less 3 months and more (14 weeks, i think) that i've been on post; 6 taken up doing naught but detail, waiting for the class cycle to start; the rest in class, 4 of those weeks in weapons immersion (sucketh) and 2-3 weeks of relative sanity (almost). so, i suppose i should break it down a little more:

weeks 1-6: arrived here, totally squared away, all the sgt's loved us, we were quiet, goofy, and high-speed; newbs came in 2nd-6th weeks, and it all went to shit. still can't tell if it was Ft. Jackson or D-2-10/ Ft. Leonardwood who screwed us up the most... but for solidarity, we like to blame Jackson. and, again, i'm stuck in a platoon with an unprecidented number of females... gah!

weeks 7-8 (class week 1-2): started class, doin' all sorts of high-speed classified schtuff... awesomeness. i'm one of only like 5 in 150 that pass the pre-emptive IP/networking quiz; and though the instructors profess that no one really has a background in the stuff we're doing... i slowly raise my hand, begging to differ...
about 1/3 of the platoon actually passed the "break-off" test (maps/symbols) the first time around; 1/3 more passed it the second time around, and all but a handfull actually managed to pass the third go-round. we lost fewer than the senior platoon.

week 9-13 (class week 3-7): and we start weapons immersion... which in our company means full battle rattle; and it also just so happened to fall at a time when, instead of doing two incriments of 10 days... they decide to land us with it for a solid 30 days straight, doing training after class and going to range on fridays, with make-up classes on saturday, so we have a whopping 8 hours to ourselves each week for four weeks => we go batty. i twist my ankle twice... run on it for 2 miles for APFT, it turns interesting shades from purple to green... i finally go to sick call after landing a 288/300 on the APFT, and i'm on a 2 week profile after my second injury... yay!
we get off of weapons immersion in time for a four-day weekend... yeah, that didn't go so well... for any of the platoons. i got put on flag detail (raising and lowering the Post flag - Garrison on the holiday - twice daily) over the holiday, and consequently for the next week = no running for 3 weeks.

week 14 (class week 8) (i think this is right... maybe): we get our asses smoked so bad for 10+ people in the company (over 300 people) fucking up royally that we all bear the mark of Charlie company on the palms of our hands (thank you, tire pit). this smoke session occurs at morning pt and after classes... most of the females (myself included) have nervous breakdowns of some sort (and i didn't even get the worst of it - thank you SSG in charge of flag detail - because SSG had an eye on all of us over the weekend and knew we didn't fuck it up - fourth on my list that i owe the uttmost to). First SGT confesses that we're the worst platoon he's had at Ft. Huachuca. but how anyone would take a platoon called Cottonmouths seriously, is beyond me.

i have pictures on 35mm that i haven't developed yet... and most of the others i've posted... but all the interesting shenanigans that go on are at times when we're not permitted to have media-electronics on us... sucketh...

alas...

my ankle is better... still on flag detail, until the 15th, so i'll have to get back on how my runs are coming... and i have a new phone with better digital resolution on the camera, so the future pics should actually be discernible.