Chris' Updates

Well, this weekend turned out to be pretty nice. I got to finish off the last of my individual AT with some good people from the 244th Engineering Battalion in their recruiting mission at the Rocky Mountain Balloon Festival at Chatfield Reservoir. Friday we met at Martinez Reserve Center to pick up our supplies, basically just the shwag and a Humvee. After getting everything arranged, we drove down to the reservoir, set up our area, and set up a plan for the following morning. It was an easy day, but I made up for it Saturday. On Saturday morning I woke up at 4:15 in order to get down to Littleton by 5:15. It was a cold morning, but I didn't think it would stay that way the entire day. We set up our table, and people started showing up. Lots of people. And if there's one thing people like at fairs, its free shwag. We couldn't keep the table stocked! Barely an hour later we had run out of most of our big items, and decided to try and save a little for the next day, so we kep...

One more set of AT orders down today. I spent another three days at Fitzsimons under the direction of SFC Reed, and did a lot more office work. Copying, filing, pulling orders, updating logs, and the like. My computer account finally works, so at least I don't have to ask permission to use the computers anymore. You would think, would you not, that a soldier in the Information Management section might want access to the computers? I did get to post a large chart with some juicy news. It seems that as long-term plans currently stand, my unit is not deploying. In fact, we're not due for any more large transitions until 2011, when it appears our unit will be disbanded. Now, that doesn't mean plans won't change, or that I could be stripped off alone and deployed with a needy unit, like SFC Alessandri was just recently. But it seems to be a good sign. Now that I've finished these days, it's time to prepare for the next three days this weekend. Some sort of recruiting...

Today Ashley and I took another day trip, this time up to Estes Park, in the main shopping district. We discovered some pretty knick knacks. Ashley got herself a stone business-card holder, and we got a couple varieties of fudge to take home to her family. We also found some other items which are going to be gifts, so I can't tell you about them yet. But Ashley made a very astute observation, if you ask me: Estes has t-shirt shops and candy stores. Lots of the two. There's a pretty wide variety of other businesses, but t-shirt shops and candy stores make up about half of the total. Trading/general/gift shops make up a fair percentage, too. We still had fun, and I'm glad we went. After we got home, Ashley thought it would be really, really nice to meet Jackie and give her the laptop she had left down here, so we made a little trip to Longmont and met Jackie half-way. Ashley's probably right, Jackie would have burst at the seams after a week of school without in-home inte...

Well, the last couple of days has been mostly devoted to making up some of my Annual Training (AT) days. As a reservist, I need 14 days of AT, whether my unit decides to go anywhere or not. This year the 2-week block was cancelled, probably a lucky thing as it would have interfered with school. But now I'm stuck fending for myself, and for almost half I'm just hanging around with our full-time personnel NCO, SFC Reed, and her assistant, SGT Ontiveros. They've been having a hard time finding me busywork, so I've ended up shredding boxes full of papers, inventorying closets of UA supplies, and just generally trying to look busy. I've finally gotten the ball rolling on my comptuer account; for the past year and a half, I've had to have my supervisors log me on to do anything on their computers. On a much more entertaining note, Tuesday night I got about 4 hours sleep due to playing DnD with Mike, his girlfriend, and a few other people I remember from BHS. I joined ...

Well, the remainder of this week has been no less exciting than the first part. Saturday Ashley and I headed up to Los Alamos with the family for Los Alamos Days, a little town fair. The highlights were the dog rescue booth and the sudden monsoon of rain, during which we hid under the library's tent. That night we saw Talladega Nights with Zach, and that was pretty darn good. So this morning, we woke up nice and early to get ready and say goodbye to the family. We were pretty much packed up, but waited on loading everything into the car. Jeannie had invited us to join her for chruch at the local Calvary Chapel, and so we met her there. The two of us having mostly Catholic church-going experience, this was quite a change, especially when the service started eating into the afternoon, a little bit longer than we had expected. But overall it was still a moment spent purely for God, and it was just as spiritually cleansing as mass. So, after our late start, we were headed on down the r...

Interesting few days. So Ashley and I got ready Wednesday morning to leave for New Mexico. But just as she's about a mile from picking me up, her van decides to dump it's oil all over the place, and she barely makes it to the house without seizing her engine. Funny, considering we had the oil changed the day before. So we call the shop, and one of the mechanics comes out to take a look. He says the filter is dented and torn, and pushed the adapter into the bottom of the engine. So, the van gets towed to the Goodyear across town. Only two and a half hours late, we hit the road. The drive is pretty calm, interrupted by our stop for lunch in Walsenburg. After lunch, we find that the AC fan isn't blowing, but after some playing with the fuse box, that's fixed. Interesting start to the trip. Thursday, Mom, Ashley and I took a trip to Santa Fe. We hit all of the good stores, Big Lots, Tuesday Morning, Pier One and the like. Blegh, girly shopping! We had lunch at the Blue Corn...

Here's a Japanese mechanical engineer with way too much free time . I found it looking for a copy of The Incredible Machine 3. Anyone remember that game? Classic.

Ok, so yet another drill weekend done. It was planned to be a quiet weekend, and basically the only things on the schedule for the lower enlisted were section training and cleaning gas masks. Well after a quick search, it became apparent that we only had a dozen or so gas masks, and the rest were probably loaned out. However, SGT Lant had some good material for section training. As a section, we're responsible for making sure that the communications equipment is running, so on a related note, he brought in a SCSI server and several hard drives to wipe. We did a review of basic computer components, and learned a good deal about SCSI peripherals that I had never dealt with. Admittedly, we didn't stay as busy as SGT Lant intended, and he had to periodically slip out for this or that, often having to stop in the middle of training. The only other person there was Whittier, and he was also popping in and out, trying to clear up his absences the past couple of drills. Sunday morning ...

And I got a B! Holy crap, that's awesome! After course forgiveness kicks in and removes my fail in the spring from calculations, I'll have a 3.0 GPA for spring and summer! That's going to look very good when I transfer into the School of Engineering.

You scored as Engineer . Military Engineer. Your job is usually overlooked, but without you nothing gets done. While you sometimes annoyed at this, and you know the only time people come to you is when there's something wrong. You understand that you are the heart and soul of any organization with honesty and nice work ethic to boot. "I need more Duct Tape!!!" Support Gunner 75% Engineer 75% Combat Infantry 69% Artillery/Armor 63% Medic 63% Special Ops 56% Officer 50% Civilian 38% Which soldier type are you? created with QuizFarm.com