Greetings from Southwest Asia!<\/p>\n
Now that I’ve gotten some sleep, I can write something that makes sense. I am well…I’m well rested, I’ve unpacked and am settled into my dorm room, and I’ve started my training program to learn my new job. The food here is decent and I’ll be getting plenty of exercise.<\/p>\n
I’m glad to finally be here! I don’t know whether I’ve let on or not, I’ve been wanting to do this for many years since I joined the AF Reserves and I’m thrilled to be part of it! Dave can attest to how many times I’ve come home from drill weekends bubbling about a deployment opportunity I’d heard about…<\/p>\n
I promise pictures soon, but I want to wait till I have a chance to get my room a little more worked out.<\/p>\n
Obviously I’m not going to be giving specifics about what I’m doing here (except that I’m doing weather work), but I’d like to share funny stories that give an idea of what life is like here. <\/p>\n
The first story is about my first night’s sleep. After I landed, I couldn’t sleep right away, I had to do some paperwork. Then I needed to switch mattresses and do some rearranging to make things a little more spacious. Then I could make my bed and fall asleep. I was so tired my eyes were closed before my head even hit the pillow! I had slept 2 hours in the previous 40.<\/p>\n
I woke up about 5 hours after I fell asleep because I had to go potty. So I got out of bed, put on my shoes and had to walk out the door to the latrine. Imagine walking out your home’s front door and then going to your neighbor two houses down to use their bathroom. Don’t get me wrong, my room is nice, the bathroom facilities are nice….but it was such a distance! And I was SO TIRED! It’s about a 90 second walk in each direction.<\/p>\n
Could I hold it? I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t unless I went to the bathroom. So I did, and I didn’t have a problem getting back to sleep.<\/p>\n
So here’s my delicate balance. It’s important to stay hydrated but I don’t want my bladder to disrupt my sleep like that. There must be some perfect amount of water to drink for that. <\/p>\n
I’ve taken for granted how easily I can slip out of bed in the middle of the night and use the bathroom and get back to sleep in 1-2 minutes!<\/p>\n
A chamber pot crossed my mind, but the thought of walking the filled chamber pot 90 seconds to the bathroom in the morning grossed me out. Ewwww….<\/p>\n
And I’m leaving you with that thought. You’re welcome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Greetings from Southwest Asia! Now that I’ve gotten some sleep, I can write something that makes sense. I am well…I’m well rested, I’ve unpacked and am settled into my dorm room, and I’ve started my training program to learn my new job. The food here is decent and I’ll be getting plenty of exercise. I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[],"tags":[13,63,616],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-4M","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":322,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/02\/books-read-on-this-deployment-so-far.html","url_meta":{"origin":296,"position":0},"title":"Books Read on this Deployment So Far","date":"12 February 09","format":false,"excerpt":"As many of you might remember from my days in Deidre's Bookclub, I\u00a0typically don't read fast. I was lucky if I could get around to\u00a0finishing the club's book of the month!Not so here! I'm able to read 1-2 hours per day and I am absolutely blasting through so many books\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":251,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/10\/wondertwin-powers-activate.html","url_meta":{"origin":296,"position":1},"title":"Wondertwin Powers, Activate!","date":"09 October 08","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":310,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/01\/running-club.html","url_meta":{"origin":296,"position":2},"title":"Running Club","date":"24 January 09","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a Running Club here. But not what you're thinking: it's not a group of us getting together to run, but rather a computer with which you get a login\/password. You log your individual running during your deployment.There are incentive t-shirts starting at 200 miles. There are more gifts if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":334,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/03\/altogether-now-how-tired-were-you.html","url_meta":{"origin":296,"position":3},"title":"Altogether Now: "How Tired Were You?"","date":"20 March 09","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Friday and Happy Spring! Another random funny deployment story for you.So here it is...6:15pm on a Friday night, and I'm still awake.\"Hey, me too! Let's go hit a club and go dancing later!\"No no no no no. I'm not supposed to be awake! For those unaware, I've been on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":341,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/04\/its-good-to-be-home.html","url_meta":{"origin":296,"position":4},"title":"It’s Good to be Home!","date":"11 April 09","format":false,"excerpt":"Greetings from Detroit! I've two legs down on this journey, three to go. The flights from Doha to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Detroit were more or less without incident (save a broken shoe heel from an overambitious beverage cart that I didn't notice till I had disembarked).I'm now getting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":315,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/01\/this-is-ridiculous.html","url_meta":{"origin":296,"position":5},"title":"This is Ridiculous…","date":"28 January 09","format":false,"excerpt":"Is this a \"Publishing Fail\"?This is from the Mideast Stars and Stripes...the 5th or 6th example of bad grammar or misspelling just in today's edition, the first I've seen as a headline.","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}