It's people like that, who willingly put their lives on hold to stand a post who are responsible for the rest of us living the lives we enjoy. My #2 all time favorite song is Toby Keith's "American Soldier" I think the mood of that is perfect. Thank you.

Still a-waitin' my phonecall. Soon as I get it I'm on the next flight out to MCRD. The suspense is driving me crazy.

I need to go study my General Orders again. I memorized 4 and 6 backwards...

Hatches are the "doors" trans-versing decks; unless they are scuttles.
The doors trans-versing a bulkhead is still a door rather it be WTD (Water Tight Door), ATD (air tight door), etc...

Yea, he sang that one for us during our last deployment. I don't know why people like his song red cup but sang that one to.

You'll have to take it up with the Marine captain. There are no decks in Snow Hall. No hatches either.

Study General Orders between sets of your workouts. Helps a lot for when you have to recall them during stressful situations, like boards or when someone is yelling at you and you're in the leaning rest. Just sayin'.

Out of curiosity, just how true is the drillsergeant from hell stereotype?

Well, I had My Senior DI - He was the Sympathetic One. Mean but caring. He was the Father Figure.
The 2 Junior DI's - They were brutal.
Of course, that is their job.

Still remember all their names.

SSgt Joyner.
Sgt Williams.
Sgt Katz.

Awesome Marines, Awesome DI's.
Semper Fidelis.

Fairly true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XKqg7MWnhM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhpXrSE0g6Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlNSPbfr5_g

In BT the rule was that a cadre member had to do anything he used as mass punishment, Which didn't help much, as they were all studs. I remember our BT platoon did something stupid, I can't remember what, as we were marching around early in BMI. Our drill Sgt (SSG Harmon) had us stop, do a half left face and hold out our rifles at arms length. He grabbed someones M16 extended it straight out at arms-length and stood there like a statue, the rifle not moving for what seemed like an hour but was probably less then 5 minutes. The rest of us didn't look much like a statue after the first minute or two.

Oooooooooooo, I remember THAT "punishment", alright.

One guy in my company - different platoon, IIRC, but ... he was your usual highschool "super jock" - probably his school's star QB. Thought he was god's gift to physical fitness.

Had an unfortunate habit of smiling like an idiot, when he was nervous, stressed, or just generally on the receiving end of "unfriendly fire" from a D.I.

...

Wound up, once, having to hold TWO rifles out, one in each hand. Couldn't stop smiling, even giggling a bit ... as his face went redder and redder, from the effort of keeping his arms straight. Which he of course failed to do, despite all the super-jock muscles.

A long time ago, way back when I was still playing Masturbation The Gathering, my DI played MTG with us.

My favorite memory of basic was having to sing the oompa loompa song as loud as I could to the TIs (in the air force we call em training instructors) before they would let the flight come in to eat.

My least favorite memory was the idiot 'high duster' - he was assigned to dust the top of everything, being 5'1". Me, being 6'1" was assigned low duster. The guy would not switch with me, not understanding that the TIs did that on purpose, to see if we were smart enough to do so. /sigh Oh well.

gorramit, I will only think of that name for it now.

Well, I got the flu and now I'm wrestling with some bronchitis, so that's fun. If I had shipped out already I probably wouldn't have gotten sick (my son brought them home from school), but on the other hand my wife has an additional set of hands (and hacking, coughing body) to help with the other sick ones.

Bleh.

And on the other, other hand ... you got to spend Christmas with your family.

Merry Christmas, Neraph!

Yah, Merry Christmas everyone! My son got a lot of NERF products. I had a little shootout with him, pitting my Maverick against his new Retaliator. Epic childhood memories right there.

So... what? He masturbated with you???

No. Back then that game can be quite self-masturbatory because everyone could focus on their own pathways to victory and it was a race who came reached their victory conditions first. Hence the change in the name.

For my Christmas I got to stay with my family and provide first aid on a rottweiler bite. Inch, maybe 1.5 inch gash in the guy's palm, cut across his thumbnail, and another minor puncture on the back of his hand. Whee!

My time at Fort Leonard Wood left me hating the words "front, back, go."

You got bronchitis? Ain't nobody got time for that!

... grass drills ... *shudder* ...

I was coughing so hard for a couple days I was sure that if I survived it I'd walk out with a six-pack. Yesterday I was laid out with a 101.6+ fever all day. Tomorrow I get to pull everything together for an interview with someone at recruiting HQ to get my waivers signed so I can ship out the 14th. Fun fun.

Yeah, the last thing you wanna do is go to basic (well, boot for you) with bronchitis. It's not nearly as fun as it sounds, trust me.

Picked up my Chronic Bronchitis in Korea, in the Winter, during Operation Team Spirit 89. NOT FUN...
Recurs every year. really sucks.

Brings back fond memories. One of my DI's was this short little guy he must have been 5'4", and he loved jumping up on your gear box so he would be face to face with some of the boots. He was one crazy MFer. Loved it all.

Bootcamp is way more fun when you catch bronchitis there. Which you probably will, or some other God-forsaken plague! Have fun, man.

Yeah, it's great when they park you as a runner for a month after you get rolled back while waiting for the next class.

The way it works now is if you show any symptoms of anything they won't ship you.

Also, it seems I may not have bronchitis. Maybe. I still am coughing, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. Prolly just a cough that I got with round 2 of whatever plague my son brought home from school.

The meeting with the ops man at HQ went well. He made me do some more pullups (14 still - I seem to be stuck there) and asked me questions to which I gave him nothing, mostly because I have nothing (no police involvement, no medical history, no drug use, no tattoos, scars, brands, UV... nothing. In fact, I've helped many of my friends stop drugs and smoking and whatnot). As it stands I'm ready to ship out on the 14th, so long as this paperwork gets cleared by the next guy who's supposed to look at it.

Why is that of interest?
Piercings I can understand, those buggers get stuck in places. But scars?

Scars/brands must not be visible when in uniform and are noted so that if your body is... separated, they can ID all the proper parts.

Yeah, "identifying remarks" is a big deal when entering the military.

I convinced the guy handling my paperwork at the MEPS in Boston, while enlisting in the Army, to list my eyes as "Hazel Blue" (despite no such color being in the all-important Book) because, well, "if the worst happens and I come home from somewhere in a box, at least it'll be more likely MY name is on that box, and my family has closure".

My eyes are "blue", but I can consciously change their color. They've been blue, green, hazel, and even purple once, but they're normally a steely/cloudy grey ringed with deep blue.

MEPS didn't care what color I wanted to call them. They called them blue.

I need to practice changing my eye color again so I can screw with people. "Oh you have such lovely blue eyes." (some conversation later) "Oh, your eyes are green. I thought they were blue." And so forth.

EDIT: In fact, when I was working security at the mall I got compliments fairly regularly about my eyes. One store's female employees actually referred to me as something along the lines of "handsome eyes."

Isn't hazel a shade of brown?

Yup.

No, not where eye color is concerned. From wikipedia:

"Hazel eyes are due to a combination of Rayleigh scattering and a moderate amount of melanin in the iris' anterior border layer. Hazel eyes often appear to shift in color from a brown to a green. Although hazel mostly consists of brown and green, the dominant color in the eye can either be brown/gold or green. This is how many people mistake hazel eyes to be amber and vice versa. This can sometimes produce a multicolored iris, i.e., an eye that is light brown/amber near the pupil and charcoal or dark green on the outer part of the iris (or vice versa) when observed in sunlight."

In my case, the usual hazel coloration, which leans towards green, is also mixed with some blues and yellows. In most light, at the time (when I was seventeen), it appeared blue or blue-green, often with amber/yellow highlights. Nowadays it tends more towards green than blue.

I got hazel eyes?! You learn something new every day.
(They're mostly brown, but got shifts into green in certain lights)

Yeah, that'd be "Hazel brown".

Fascinating.

I'll practice changing my eye color and try and get a video posted about it before I leave.

Huh, I don't have any conscious control over my eyes changing colors, it's all down to mood. Which is a great boon for my wife, as she know when I have no sense of humor left. I'd like to see that, Neraph.

That's actually close to having conscious control - all you have to do is learn to emote on cue. Remember things that make you feel a particular emotion strongly and you'd be able to change your eye color. That's how I do it.

That aside, as long as my paperwork's been processed properly (...) I'll be leaving this Monday. Things are about to get interesting around here.

Take care dude!

Semper Fidelis and Good Luck Neraph.

We'll miss you, Neraph. But godspeed and fortes fortuna adiuvat.

Safe travels and be back to disagree with us soon

Stay safe and good luck, buddy.

Good luck, and thanks for your service.

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My paperwork hasn't been approved. The new tentative date is the 28th. This is getting old.

Bureaucrazy!