This not a rigid amount of time but I think it’s a good estimate…90
days in theater, plus some travel time on both ends. Jacob will have a
new responsibility: adding one number on the left, subtracting one on
the right…every day till I come home.
With Jacob’s affinity for numbers this will be really good for him.
Greetings from Hurlburt Field, FL!!! It’s about midway between Pensacola and Panama City on the FL Gulf Coast. I think they call this area the “Emerald Coast”. I’m here for 2 1/2 weeks for some Air Force training, don’t worry, I’ll be home by Christmas!
After this morning’s initial shock of having to scrape ice off my windshield with the sleeve of my shirt, we got to the class and was met with many things that told me just how long it had been since I’d been through any formal Air Force training!
I last did formal AF training in summer 2000, I guess.
As you see from the picture, I now am in possession of an eBook. It isn’t mine, I have to give it back on the last day of class. The top model is what I have and what you see pictured above (which is the one I have right now). This is what was issued to me instead of the stack of books of days gone by. We had about an hour of training on how to use this eBook and then we sat with them in front of us, following along the diagrams, notes and supplemental text via our eBook.
It certainly got me thinking: how much did this cost the Air Force? I’m sure it was a lot — but then I thought about how much more flexible this is for updating all the class materials, and the cost savings on paper and printing/binding costs. Pretty cool.
There’s a younger officer in the class who is assigned to the active duty unit I work with in SC. I see him routinely when I drill every couple months. When we received our eBooks, Alan took his and knew exactly what to do with it, while I was fumbling like an idiot. He walked me through many of the basic tasks and I felt at least slightly ahead of the game by the time we received the formal training.
Typically I pride myself in keeping on top of technology, but I have to admit that this one took me by surprise! I’ve seen those Amazon Kindles for sale — they’re pretty expensive and always backordered…I’ve never seen an e-book in person so after a while I had a good time playing with it.
Too bad it’s a military eBook, many of the functions are disabled, such as the ability to go out and download, say, Breaking Dawn* by Stephenie Meyer, the next book I’ll be reading…
*OMG! I’m so hooked on the Twilight Saga! I haven’t seen the movie as of this writing, but my friend Lisa Coleman (she was stationed in Raleigh while we were living in NC, and she’s now stationed here in FL) might join me this weekend. I read 1/2 of Eclipse yesterday on the plane. I plan to finish the rest of Eclipse this week…in between working on Christmas cards and the Vollmer Holiday Newsletter.
We awakened this morning to about an inch of snow here. Yay! I leave tomorrow for Florida for my pre-deployment training and I was hoping to see some snow before I left. We had the boys bundled up and out the door around 8am.
That’s Jacob throwing snow at Howie on the left. Timmy in the center with the back of his hood covered in snow.
Howie probably had the most fun of all, he was running in circles and enjoying rolling around in the snow.
What’s super cool? This snow won’t melt by lunchtime, the way it usually does in Raleigh.
C-130 landing at Ramstein AB, Germany for some R&R during a Bosnia deployment, Jan. 1, 1998. Dave was deployed to Bosnia for an overlapping period of time, but we were in separate locations.
First of all, Happy Veteran’s Day! To my fellow Veterans out there, thanks for reading my blog and for serving our great nation.
But allow me to stir the pot a little. I posted this NY Times article on my Facebook profile this morning and it generated quite a bit of commentary.
I was livid when I read this — I’ve been through enough Public Affairs training in my day to understand that the military’s relationship with the media is a delicate one. If you shut them out, they’ll just come up with their own information and possibly send the American public the wrong message about what the Dept. of Defense is up to. So the DoD’s position is to allow the media as much access as safety and security will allow. This is how we had such great coverage of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and also why ABC’s Bob Woodruff and his cameraman were injured by an IED in 2006. (I’m glad they’re recovered!). The journalists are aware of the risks for such media coverage.
Anyway, this article claims “senior officials” told the NY Times about some “secret orders” for “secret missions” into Pakistan and Syria to covertly chase down Al Qaeda.
I do not know whether this information is true or not. As the Army used to say about speaking about topics unrelated to what you do, “Stay in your lane.” I don’t know anything about this.
I’m upset because the media publishing a story full of the word “secret” probably means that America’s people, resources and national interests might be risked. We are not in a vacuum — Pakistan and Syria have now perked up their ears like a dog hearing the word “Walk?”, and even Al Qaeda probably knows this story now and will act accordingly. Go into further hiding, find other nations for safe haven, or otherwise change their tactics.
Or…they can go on the offensive, and something bad can happen to those Special Operations forces.
And if you REALLY want a good time, delve into the 300+ comments this story has generated. I was pleased to see how many Americans feel that the secret missions were justified, but also horrified by some of the not-so-nice things foreigners had to say about the situation.
Bottom line: New York Times, your story was poorly timed and probably put the lives of American servicemembers at risk. And whoever you “senior officials” are, are you sleeping soundly at night?
A Good Read. This doesn’t endorse one candidate or another, but reminds us of the few in America who are fighting for the freedoms of the whole country.
It’s a tough place to be in: on the one hand, I’m grateful that I’m only going to the Middle East for a very short time, and that in 2003 Dave was only in Iraq for a very short time also. But on the other hand, is it fair that those Soldiers, Marines and Airmen who have been on multiple tours carry my family’s burden?
Over the weekend I officially got permission to post a nice photo and talk about Paul on my blog. He’s my USAF “partner in crime”, we’ve been colleagues for as long as I’ve been a reservist — nearly 4 years! We now work together in SC, although I actually only see him 3-4 times per year on the occasional drill weekend. He’s in a holding pattern waiting to be our unit’s commander — I hope it’s soon for his sake, he’s starting to bounce off the walls wanting to boss us around 😉
Many of the things you see on my blog are inspired by conversations I’ve had with him. Such as the polls. He and I trade ideas about cake decorating, family dinners, what new cars to buy, Wii games, new gadgets, activities to do with the family on weekends, and many many many professional matters. He and his wife introduced me to the Pioneer Woman!
In fact, just today he mailed me this blog to read. I thought I’d share with you an example of the fun stuff we discuss.
All this time I’ve been telling Paul, “Get your own blog” so he can pontificate about his adoration of Costco, GPS units, separate master bedrooms and the true value of your vote in America.
Paul and I are taking a deployment to the Middle East in 2009 — not together. He and I received permission to split a rotation, I’ll take the first half, he’ll take the 2nd. I think this is a wonderful opportunity presented to the two of us — our opportunities to serve the Global War on Terror without being away from home for too long, and a testament of the trust and friendship he and I have for each other that we both said “Okay, we’ll do it”. After all, if one of us bails, the other is held responsible for the ENTIRE trip.
For those who knew this was coming up, I won’t discuss the details here, but I’m leaving sometime after Christmas and should be back in early April. I’m not going to Iraq or Afghanistan, but to another location that supports those locations. Please rest assured that I will be safe in this location, provided the area remains as stable as it has been for the past several years. The job I’ll be performing is quite exciting and I’m sure I’ll be super-busy! Relative to most other military members, this is a very short deployment, although one day away from my boys is a day too many.
Tangent: I’ve promised to Dave that after this trip I will never voluntarily take a deployment for the remaining 6 years of my AF career. He’s going to have a challenge playing single Dad during our first Nebraska winter, and he’s been a great sport at keeping it in perspective. He wants to introduce the boys to skiing while I’m gone!
So here’s to you Paul (I’m raising my cotton boll to you!) — thanks for your personal and professional friendship, and for splitting the trip the desert.
PS: The picture above was taken in May 2008 at a picnic while we were working in SC. At first we were both posing like superheroes and the line “Wondertwin Powers, Activate!” went through my head.
I guess it’s simply in the stars: I cannot fly from Point A to Point B without some sort of delays.
So here I am in the Columbia, SC, airport, wrapping up my 4 days of drill with my AF Reserve unit (a great productive weekend by the way), and due to a missed maintenance inspection, my aircraft can’t be flown and the agents are in the process of rescheduling everyone.
Unfortunately, they’re working on us in alphabetical order of our destination cities…they’re only on Denver after about 35 minutes, Omaha will be a while.
On the flight in from Omaha to Columbia, an aircraft mishap resulted in the airport being closed for 2 hours last Wednesday night. They’re super careful now after the crash in Columbia a couple weeks prior. So my flight put down in Greensville-Spartanburg and we were offered a bus to take us to Columbia. First they’d have to FIND a bus.
While that was happening, I took my life into my own hands and bummed a ride in a rental car from another woman who also didn’t want to wait for the bus. It was great, but Paul had to sit for some 2 1/2 hours waiting for me. Thanks for your patience, Paul!
This morning I had to leave my hotel at 4:30am to get to Columbia in time and we also wanted to make the trip early enough for Steve to get back to Sumter before traffic got too bad. Thanks to Steve for the ride. Too bad there are delays!
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