Getting married next week. Not soliciting comments or anything, just recording my life. At this point, I don’t have time to say much about the marriage other than I am exceedingly lucky to have been chosen by such a laid back, compassionate, and beautiful person. These adjectives are certainly not the only thing going for this chick, either. She has quite a plethora of nouns, also.

Teaching and supervising are also going pretty well. Really growing and learning new schills.

The last 24 hours have been awful!
I stand watch in a space called combat with a bunch of officers. It is the blue lit space that you see in the movies with all the radar screens. My job is to click on the air contacts on the screen, and pass the information to the various watch stations through out combat. Well, yesterday evening at about 8:30pm I was on watch. My superior called over for some information:
“RSC- Air check print track 2344″
I responded “Air-RSC Track 2344 strength 2″
She then said “RSC-AIR you have to speak up”
This happened several times before I realized that my microphone was not working.
This time she said “RSC-Air check print track 80165″
I took my headset off because I was frustrated with it.
I shouted “AIR-RSC TRACK 80165 STRENGTH 1!”
She said “You have to speak into the headset”
I responded “I HAVE BEEN, THE HEAD SET IS BROKEN, I HAVE HAD IT 1 INCH AWAY FROM MY FACE!”
I didn’t realize that the Captain was standing right behind me. He yelled over to my department head “Hey CSO, Fix your RSC.”
So first, CSO politely corrects me. Then about 10 minutes later Master Chief (my most senior enlisted authority) calls me to his office and proceeds to cuss me out for about 20 minutes. He told me “don’t go back on watch tonight, get your head strait” So I went and worked out to cool off then I went to bed. At about 10:30 I got woke up and told to get into my Dress Blue uniform. I already knew what this meant. The captain was pissed and had set a vendetta against me. He took me to Captain’s Mast at 11pm last night. He charged me with article 86, disrespecting a superior commissioned officer.
He put me on restriction for 45 days, 45 days extra duty, half months pay times 2, and suspended bus. That is the same punishment they give for getting a DUI. That is the same punishment they give for breaking liberty policies in foreign ports. It’s bullshit and the most ridiculous mast case that I have heard of. I will be restricted to the ship and cannot leave; I also have to work even longer hours. I will still be on restriction for my birthday. I could try to appeal it but then they would demote me. All I wanted to do was to get out of here without getting in any serious trouble. I never thought I would get screwed for doing my job, and that is all that I was doing. I didn’t cuss at her. I didn’t say anything derogative at all. She and the Captain took me “speaking up” as “disrespect.” Fuck the Navy!

I’ve been putting this off and putting this off. It’s time I post an update. Trust me, it’s not you, it’s me. I just go blank whenever I start to write an update.

……what the hell was I doing here again? Oh right.

Well, I went to Iraq. I’m friends with most of you on Facebook, so I imagine you saw how most of that went from the updates. I’ll give a brief synopsis:

When I came up for this deployment, they had already tried to send 3 people before me. They all got out of it, mostly on medical profiles. It came to me and they realized some of the shit I have wrong with me. I haven’t been to see a doctor in a while though, so they figured I was good to go. I went along with it. I really thought I would be ok. I really just wanted to make the extra money before I get out. It was only a 6 month deployment and as soon as I got back I would be getting out of the military. It really wasn’t that bad. I installed and repaired cable all over the base. I was doing work that was fairly simple, but gratifying and I wasn’t stuck in an office all day. The really shitty part was the 12 hour work days 6 days a week. The little time I had off I spent on the internet. I let things going on here in Maryland and back in Alabama get to me too much. I wanted something to help me before the depression got worse so I went to the doctor and spoke to a psychiatrist. He pointed out that I had already tried several anti-depressants with no improvement. Also that I have hypothyroidism which would complicate things further. He said he was surprised they had deployed me in the first place. They sent me out by med-evac that night. It all happened really fast and I was actually a little scared. They sent my supervisor with me because they thought I might be a suicide risk. I really wasn’t, but he was a really cool guy so I was kind of glad he was there. I stayed in Germany for a view days where they were going to try to treat me and send me back, but they didn’t feel comfortable sending me back, the doctor suggested I go back to my home station.

When I got back, I needed a place to stay. I slept on my friend Mike’s couch for a week, then my friend Nikki offered the chance to move in with her. It’s not a very large apartment, but there was room for my bed and me and Nikki get along really well. I’ve had a crush on her for awhile and we’ve spent many long drunken nights discussing why we can’t date. It used to frustrate me, but it’s pretty much for the best. She’s actually done a lot of good for me. She’s got me eating healthier and she tries to make me feel better about myself. She’s also given me a clearer window into the inner workings of female-kind which I can only describe as diabolical. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way things have been since I got back.

My current plans are to move back to Alabama. I now have the Post 9/11 GI Bill. It will pay 100% of my college tuition and they pay for some living expenses. They thing is, until I start college, I won’t see any benefit from this. So I have to decided where I want to go and how I will get there. I’ll need some start-up funds too because the VA is notorious for being late as shit with it’s payments. It’s ok though. I’ve made it through the worst of this. This is what I’ve been working towards.

Wednesday, March 24th, is my last day on active duty. I’ve flying down on April 11th for Robin’s wedding. I’ll be flying back up on the 18th to spend the last bit of the month with my friends here and plan my move. I’ll be moving back down in early May. I’m really excited about Robin’s wedding. I haven’t heard much on Xack’s, but that’s probably because I don’t pay attention or he doesn’t want me to come.

I’ll end here for now. There’s a lot more I would like to write about, but I imagine I’ll see most of you at Robin’s wedding and I’ll need some fodder to make idle chat with at the reception, so I’ll save it.