Busy Work - 10 April 2009 - 2100

I have been on active duty now for 136 days and been overseas now for 62 and in Leatherneck for 8. I’m still learning the ropes of Leatherneck and the surrounding camps associated with it. I’ve been trying to keep as busy as possible, but it hasn’t been the easiest. I was put on a mission that I was told was going to take a lot of time, driving one of our trucks around hauling materials. Turned out that we were support for the Marines and we got it done in 3 days, 2 of which I was the NCOIC for our crew. (Noncommissioned Officer In Charge) Since then not much has been going on. There are random odd jobs that I try and get in on every now and again, but they really are small projects that don’t take up much time. Like I had said in a post a long way back, we were supposed to be running the Ammo Storage Point (ASP) here for the camps, but it isn’t even built and won’t be for quite some time. Until then, we are basically the hired help for whatever crappy project needs done. Before I got here they were on everything from Force Protection duty to setting up tents for our Battalion. We are doing neither right now; in fact we aren’t doing a whole lot of anything. One small crew is still our construction crew, building tables and cabinets and all sorts of things from the Battalion. The mechanics stay pretty busy too fixing everything we break. We even provide a couple people to run the computer lab every now and again. Me personally, besides that 2 day mission, I have been watching a lot of ‘Lost’, drinking a lot of coffee and teaching SPC Kotinek how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. I’m such a good teacher that he nearly has it and it hasn’t even been a week. I talk to my wife on my cell phone whenever she calls, which is every other day or so and we still trade emails, but not in mass quantity like we had been. The internet lab is closed a lot of the time. I think whenever someone is killed they close it so families can be properly notified, but I’m not 100% on that. Anyway, there is no place for me to hook up my laptop and with the lab being closed a lot and it being full it’s hard for me to get my pictures uploaded to facebook and transferred over to the blog so be patient. Time is going by fairly quickly but when I look at my calendar there is still so much left to do. On Monday, we passed our 1/3 mark for time spent on our 400 day order. My leave, scheduled in July, will be a welcomed break and by that point we will have passed our halfway point. I wish I had more to talk about right now. I apologize for not writing more of late. Like I said, I’m still trying to feel out how everything works around here and kinda where I fit in. The food at the chow hall is pretty decent, but I can tell already that it’s on a short rotation and it will get pretty old before too long; brown stuff and rice, brown stuff and noodles, bbq’d brown stuff… you get the point. I’ll get some pics up soon, and make sure to check my Facebook for more pics.