Old Fashioned Beat-Down

First and foremost, if you're not familiar with Air Force rank structure, please reference this website if you would like to understand the following story more...

As I've mentioned before, there are five other units here like mine, and therefore, five other officers in the same type of position as me. With each of those officers comes a Chief or Senior Master Sergeant as the superintendent of their units. Well, some of those Chiefs got together and decided to challenge all the officers to a game of basketball. It was a bit of a surprise, seeing as how most Chiefs are well into their mid to late 40s and the average age of the officers was about 30. We accepted the challenge from the Chiefs, expecting an easy win. I mean, they couldn't outlast us, right? What, with their old age, I figured we'd need a stretcher or an ambulance at the ready in case somebody threw a hip or had a heart attack...I was only slightly wrong in my assumption. In typical Chief fashion, they were able to recruit a much younger Senior Master Sergeant who was pretty decent at the game, compared to the average white person.
I wouldn't say we were exactly "schooled", but the end result was Chiefs 2, Officers 1...We got beat by the old-timers! I would have been embarrassed, but everyone should know that at 5 ft 7 in, basketball is not exactly my best sport. Not that i didn't pull my best Chris Kramer impression on defense, as evidenced by my superior sweatiness in the picture:

It was a hard fought battle, and just about everyone had some sort of minor injury from it after it was all said and done. My knee tried to buckle on me after I jumped up to block a shot. Now it hurts whenever I walk up or down stairs. I'm sure it'll fix itself...but if someone wanted to mail me an ice-pack or two, that would be super awesome because they don't sell them on base here!

In other news, i would just like to use tonight's dinner, in conjunction with Sunday's dinner from my last post, as evidence to how well a person can eat out here. Tonight was steak and lobster night. Booyah. I don't even get steak and lobster night back home. Mainly because I hate seafood, so why would I cook myself lobster? But still, every Wednesday night is some form of surf and turf with a strip or T-bone steak and Lobster or fried shrimp (I hate shrimp, too). So we eat pretty well out here. There's "healthy" alternatives to choose from, if you want. Like grilled chicken, a salad, or maybe some fruit? Fill up with a bunch of water? But after doing some people watching over these last few months, I'm willing to bet not a ton of people choose these options. This base is full of Fatty McFatties and guys who look like they're trying to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. Except me, of course. Although, the jalapeno poppers and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies are hard to pass up...

Whatever floats your boat, I guess

One of the fun experiences of being in another culture is seeing all the different products in the stores that they sell, and buy, regularly. So far, I haven't found anything that really jumped off the shelves at me as hilariously unique...unless you count those multi-colored rabbits and chicks I saw that one day...until now. I present to you...POCARI SWEAT!

I don't know what the hell a Pocari is, but I certainly wouldn't think the sweat of such a creature would be consumable, let alone thirst quenching. However, it appears it IS packed with ions...in case you're low on your ion supply.
After further research, I found (thank you Wikipedia) that this is actually a Japanese product (go figure) that has a grapefruit taste, and there's no such thing as a Pocari. But if a Pocari DID exist, I would imagine it would be some sort of Pokemon creature with special ionized sweating powers. I'm still not drinking it. Read the side label:

I'm telling you, there's nothing that sounds better after taking a bath than an ice cold Pocari Sweat, which has "a very similar composition to that of human body fluid"...refreshing! I also love how they describe it as "the appropriate beverage to quench your thirst." Not the best. Not the worst...but the appropriate. Anything else would be inappropriate, I'm guessing? Take THAT Gatorade!

As you can probably guess, my trip off base today was highly uneventful, as the highlight of the day was finding Pocari Sweat. Runner-up highlight of the day: Mongolian Grill night at the chow hall! They have it every Sunday, but most Sundays the line is so long to get some that I become impatient (odd for me, I know) and end up getting whatever else their serving, usually bland chicken with steamed-to-death vegetables. But not tonight! Tonight I timed it right and got into a short line.
Don't judge me...I was thoroughly excited about this.

That's it for tonight. I'm going to try and get some extra sleep tonight so I'm not dragging ass to start the week off. That's not fun at all.

Thanks to those who read this, and if you have any questions or topic ideas, let me know!

Technical difficulties...

So, the internet has been down for the past three days, going on four, in our trailer. Every night I went back to my room expecting to be able to get online and do some stuff, I was quickly denied. It was one of those "Hey, we know it's not broken yet, but we're going to fix it and make it better" moments by the Communications people here and, surprise!, they ended up breaking it all together. Awesome guys...(insert slow, sarcastic clapping) But they finally got it back up and working tonight, so I'm back in business.

It's been a very eventful week, and for all the wrong reasons. Not trying to make it depressing, but I want to keep everyone up to date with what's going on over here and that means talking about both the good and the bad. So, on a very serious note (and you may want to skip this next paragraph if you're sensitive to topics on death), we occasionally have what we call "Fallen Warrior" Ceremonies here. To put it very bluntly, when someone is killed in action in Afghanistan or Iraq, the remains are processed very quickly and transported by plane back to the US. Occasionally, these flights pass through the base I'm at and we hold a short ceremony in their honor as they load and unload the caskets from the jets. It's a very humbling moment when you're standing there in formation, saluting as they carry off 5 caskets at a time. There have even been days when there are two or three ceremonies in one day. Earlier this week, one of the soldiers that was being transported was escorted by an Army Command Sergeant Major of one of the regions in Afghanistan (every casket is escorted by someone). The soldier in the casket that he was escorting was that of his son, who was supposed to be turning 24 this week. The Sergeant Major was on his 4th deployment and his son was on his 8th. It was a moment that I will not forget and really put things into perspective for me.

In other news, I'm getting to experience my first real personnel issue with one of my troops here where I actually had to take into account his potential for committing suicide if left unwatched overnight. I can't really go into details about what happened, but he's being sent home early for an investigation and there was the potential that he may do something. Luckily, he was able to talk to the right people and everyone made sure he was mentally okay. On one side, it's a little bit of a shock because I've heard plenty of stories from other people about all the crazy things that happen, but I've never experienced anything first-hand. On the other side, it's getting to the point where nothing really surprises me. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing just yet.

Despite all the depressing news, I'm actually in pretty good spirits. If you read the first story in this post, I've come to realize that things can always be worse than what they are. Everything else is going well and the days are starting to fly by. Won't be long until I can enjoy the green grass and some time off! Hope everyone is doing well.

Almost Summer...

Another Sunday, another day off...thankfully. Everything went relatively well with that engine change I talked about before. The jet's back in the fight and the week ended pretty well. We've been getting lucky out here for the most part with the weather, but you can tell that summer is just around the corner. Summer here means 120+ degrees and lots of sun. So far, we've been in the mid to upper 90's and the last week has been pretty cloudy. Tonight I even had my long run cut in half because of a lightning/dust storm that kicked up (see picture). Just so you know, it's pretty tricky to actually get a picture of a lighting bolt. Took me about ten minutes and 20 pictures to do it.

 

You can see the dust getting picked up by the winds by the light post in the first picture. That's the other thing about here, it's like Nebraska in that it always seems to be windy. Combine that with 100+ degrees and it's like standing in front of a hairdryer.

I definitely miss green scenery. I miss grass and trees. I keep thinking about how awesome it would be to just have an actual two day weekend and do nothing but cookout, play cornhole, drink, and relax with some friends...preferably by a lake or at Purdue's Grand Prix (which is this coming weekend). Good times...good times

One of the positive things I've got going for me is a great group of co-workers. If you go back to my second post, I mentioned that I was the Officer in Charge (OIC) of an Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU). Well, there's four other AMUs out here in addition to mine, so that means there's four other OICs that I work with. Luckily they're all great guys and we all get along well. Saturday nights we usually get together and have a few beers and wind down after everything that happened during the week. All but one of them are further along in their careers than I am (about 6 years on average), so it's nice to know I have some of the same issues and frustrations that they have. It means I'm somewhat on the right track and not completely lost...just a little lost.

That's about it for now, though. Not very exciting on a day-to-day basis.

Operation Charlie Foxtrot

So the engine change was made out to be as big of a deal as I thought it would, so at least I knew it was coming. I still underestimated the importance of paperwork completion to some people. I'm in a "war zone" where my primary responsibility is to ensure that the jets I'm in charge of fly the sorties that they're supposed to. Mission first, right? I guess that's the case, as long as all the proper forms and documentation are filled out correctly, of course. Here's a picture of the engine change with the old, damaged engine in the background and the new engine in the foreground:

If it was just the engine change going on right now, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but there's about 4 or 5 other things going on right now that just compound the stress levels, dealing with everything from people to the weather. War is hell, I guess. This picture kind of sums up how those in charge in the military (at least the Air Force) get carried away with the stupid little rules and forget why we're here in the first place:

Don't forget to where your reflective belt. That's a big no-no.

On a separate note, I found out a couple weeks ago that I will not be able to volunteer for another "deployment" that's out there that would put me in Las Vegas from October to next April. I figured I wouldn't be able to, which is alright. We're apparently going to have a shortage of officers back in my home unit, so they can't afford to let me go, or at least that's what they tell me. It would have been nice to get away from Nebraska for this next winter, but instead , this will free up some time to go on some trips to visit people I haven't seen in years. Only problem now is that I have to start looking for a new place to live before I get back to the states (I moved out of my apartment to save money, so I'm technically homeless at the moment). I took a look online at some apartments in downtown Omaha and realized that I could buy a decent house with lower mortgage payments than what they charge for rent. Decisions, decisions...