TTT - 5/31: Another month down!

Ahh, Tuesday again. The alarm is working, and Lynette didn't have to remind me! What happened this week?

Well, beyond wishful thinking, I have nothing exciting to write about this week. The highlight of this week so far has been Tracey unloading her FrontierVille collection inventory on me. (Thanks, Tracey! I probably would have never gotten all those things. ;))

We had our first three day weekend! Well, some people did...mine was cut short by a Memorial Day ceremony at the basketball court. It was a nice gesture, but it was 120 at 10 AM so not very fun. After that I had some paperwork to catch up on from the previous week, my Monday ritual. That pretty much put me at a full workday. At least most of my guys took the three day weekend off! For those who were really ambitious Monday morning, there was a 5k run. At 6 AM it was 85 degrees, and by the time most people were done at 6:30 it was about 95. Not my idea of a good time. I'll wait for the Father's Day 3 man 6k relay. :D

The evening included some activities that mostly involved non-alcoholic beer. C'mon guys, why punish yourselves like that?! No one I know drinks Budweiser for the taste... There was volleyball, free throw & 3-point shooting contests, tug-of-war, among other festivities. I chose to play pool beforehand and be gone before the NA beer started flowing.

With this incredible heat came an inquiry about how to keep our shop cool during the day. (Not everyone get's to work at night. :D) The solution was a curtain enclosure... It's basically a large mesh tarp that traps heat in. So instead of being 110 in the shade of the shop compared to the 120 in the sun, it's now 135 in the shade of the shop. We had working AC units until a few days ago when they replaced the generator with a new one that requires a key...I have yet to see this key. On top of that, only one of the two AC units is hooked up to the generator. Maybe when the AC units are both working, it will be less than completely miserable in the shop, but for now I'll stick to my office.

Today is the last day of May. That's another page on the calendar that is now behind us. We have a couple more left, which sadly is always the longest. I'm hoping a couple things pick up here for a least a couple weeks to help the time go by, but even then, that will just be a short reprieve. I plan on getting some geocaching supplies out here to plant some of those bad boys. I already have one ready to go, I just have to place it. ;) As of now it is camouflaged perfectly on one of my lockers with something written on it. :p

That does it for this week. Next week will be June! (Is 307 here yet? :p) See you then!

TTT - 5/24: Squeaking it in!

So it's technically still Tuesday at home! Lynette reminded me in a quick conversation this morning that I forgot something...typical. ;)

My alarm I have set for this went off right in my hand, but I was having issues getting some webpages loaded and I lost track of what I was doing. These things happen. Now to come up with something interesting to say...

We have now had the guys on the night shift for a week. The week has been full of nothing but heartache for those guys. The boats would breakdown, they would get fixed then another one would break, rinse and repeat for a week. It would be one thing if they were easily solved problems, but the boats here are so beat down that they are random, off the wall problems that take almost all work day to discover. Sometimes we would get a boat fixed, drop it in the water, then we would have to pull it again with another issue. Such is the life of the boat maintenance facility.

During the day we have been fighting boredom. There has been a gun rack that needed some modifications for someone's personal use...that is how DC2 has been killing time. I have been working on admin stuff which is monotonous, but someone has to do it.

That is about it, we have plans to run around town this week. There should break up the tedious tasks to stay awake during the hot of the day. I may even find some time for some geocaching. ;)

Next week, hopefully I'll have more exciting tales, but probably not. ;) See you then!

TTT - 5/17: Writer's Block

Another Tuesday has arrived! I have heard that this has become someone's weekly ritual. Yes, someone other than me! ;) If you're wondering about the alarm...it did go off, I was not here (initially,) and Andy did not smash the phone! Luckily for me, I was only about 5 minutes behind the alarm.

So this week I have absolutely nothing to write about, hence the title. The only big news is that it has been freakin' hot here. We have had black flag days (over 93 degrees with humidity) every day since last week. This has led the guys to finally get their wish and shift to a night shift. Good news for them, bad news for me. They get to work when it's cooler, and I am stuck in the shop during the day with just the Navy guys! One of the guys did volunteer to stay on days with me. This allows his duty section to sleep while he takes trouble calls, and it prevents me from having to hunt down someone to go with me if I have to leave the base for any reason.

Other than that life is pretty boring. I'm so bored that the highlight of my day is playing Mafia Wars and Frontierville on facebook. I'm either doing that or reading...and as Lynette is aware, I am running out of books. ;) I do watch movies, but my supply of movies isn't unlimited either. There are also two TV shows I get every week via iTunes, but one is having it's season finale this week...So much time so little to do. :p Every couple days I do find myself playing pool at the MWR. I'm not the greatest player in the world by any stretch, but I have managed to pull off some pretty decent shots (and still usually lose!)

And here is where it ends this week. As I said, I just haven't had anything exciting going on worth noting. Hopefully next week will be more intriguing (sorry Tracey. ;)) So until then, have a good week!

TTT - 5/10: I have truly taken over!

It is 7:30 in the PM locally. My alarm went off at 7:00...and I wasn't here! But I did have my phone with me so Andy wouldn't smash it!!! ;) (Crap, I need something to write about...)

So last week was less than eventful for me. The most exciting thing that didn't happen yesterday you may note at the bottom of this week's blog entry. I am no longer posting as "Lynette Fuge" on this page! I figured out some of the settings for this thing while I was looking for something else. The editing of this setting may be useful to me in a project I am currently trying to revive at the urging of a couple of my MK brethren...*looks in the general direction of Dave and Devlon's rooms*

The story behind how I figured it out is less than interesting and isn't very long, but it does involve one of Lynette's many projects while I'm away. As you may know she is my unit's ombudsman. For those of you who didn't know or don't know what that means, she is the liaison between my command and the families of those of us sweating profusely in late Winter, early Spring. ;) She is trying to figure out how to setup a blog for that, but apparently there is some regulation that states it needs to be accessed only by people who are authorized to get the information. Blogspot limits the number of readers one can have on a private page to 100...this is simply not enough if everyone authorized the information follows the blog. I was looking into some options on how to get around this or at another site that may be useful. That is how I stumbled onto the setting that allows me to post as myself! But we still haven't figured out the free private blog site that allows more than 100 readers. She is currently using Shutterfly, but they have ads and doodads galore on the page which is annoying and distracting. If you happen to know of anything...I'm all ears! (or eyes in this case, I guess)

I was wrong....I did have something exciting (to me) happen on Saturday which leads into Monday. I got two packages on Saturday, one large one and one small one. I have been waiting for a replacement HDD to show up because the one I bought here got corrupted and unusable after three weeks. I also was waiting for a shipment of parts to arrive from the unit back home. I went to pick up my small package because I need the box to ship the old HDD back to the company as part of the replacement agreement. The other box I asked if I could make arrangements to pick up Monday since I'll be at the shop. I was told that was no big deal, and the box is kind of heavy.

Yesterday, after lunch, I went to pick up my parts! Or so I thought...I was handed a box (50+lbs) shipped from Arizona. I don't know anyone who is currently in Arizona so I was perplexed! What could possibly be in this heavy box, specifically addressed to me, from an address I have never heard of before? How about 90 boxes of Girl Scout cookies? That's right...I have just received a mysterious box full of cookies from a Girl Scout troop in Arizona. Who could possibly have given my mailing address to these girls? My first thought was Devlon (because he's devious like that Tracey!) But even he would only subject me to 2 or 3 boxes of torture at a time, not 90! So call up the Mystery Machine...I need this case solved! There were also post cards in the box the girls had drawn on and wrote little messages on. I left them, with the cookies, in the Chief of the Watch office so everyone could enjoy. (I took 4 boxes for myself after I went to the gym 5 hours later. :p)

I shared the news with as many people as I could find who might know anything about random cookie deliveries and no one could tell me anything. So I went to Lynette for help. The only other thing I could think of was our friends from church who are in the Army Reserve had them sent. I had just received an Easter box from them full of junk food so it seemed semi-logical. I left the mystery with Lynette for the night, and I went to bed because my router battery died and I couldn't talk to her about it anymore.

By the time I woke up this morning the mystery had been solved, and the culprit was one I didn't expect! Larry (who was my Chief of the Boat when I was in the Navy) and his wife Terri have a niece who is in Girl Scouts in Arizona. They were the ones who had all the fat pills sent my way! What a nice gesture, as I now know 90 boxes of cookies were not meant for me. ;) If you're reading, thank you guys! I will be sending an email to the troop to give my thanks later.

So the rest of Monday was filled mostly with paperwork for me and boat maintenance for the rest of the guys. After dinner there was supposed to be a comedian here at the camp. When I was walking back to my building, the show had already started. To my knowledge it was supposed to be one guy and that was it, even though on the graphic going around camp, it was that guy and three women on the tour. I didn't think much of it when I saw the graphic because I figured that maybe they broke up here to go to different camps in one night. However, when I was walking through, one of the women was on stage. I was a little confused, but I stayed to watch anyway. Who doesn't like comedy in the desert?

When the first woman was done with her set, she introduced another woman...I am thoroughly confused at this point, but light is about to be shed on the subject! The second comedian explains why the man isn't on stage. Apparently they were in Africa last week and they got to play with the military police dogs. They dressed all up in the suits and got chased down by trained animals. The guy apparently got paired up with an 80 lb German Sheppard. He was given a head start, as is customary for training the dogs. By the time they let the dog go and it caught him, he had reached a wall...the dog and the wall made a comedian sandwich and the guy blew out his knee! So he was out of commission for this leg of the tour and we got all three women telling us jokes! It was hilarious and afterward we got to go up on stage to meet them and get autographs and take pictures. I'm not a picture guy so I stuck with the autographs. The first woman on stage wrote "Powder your balls!" on all the guys pages...except mine. Mine says, "Power your balls!" I don't know what that means, but I can come up with some fairly painful possibilities. :D

Well, as usual, I have come to the table with nothing to say, and filled it with tales of hilarity. ;) This is where I wrap up the show. I'll be here again next week to ramble on about another topic I haven't predetermined until I start clacking away at the keyboard. See you then! (Don't forget who wrote this entry this week! :D)

TTT - 5/3: Now what?

Well, it's Tuesday again. According to the passive-aggressive note on my iPhone, that I sent an alarm on, anyway. ;) This will be the first week that I wing the blog...and I'm dedicating it to Andy. (Thanks for the note, jerk! :p)

Just to follow up on some old business, last week I talked about the cats. I have an update, sort of. On Friday before our command barbecue at the beach there was a kitten sighting! One of the guys was cleaning up before heading to the beach and this awful mewing sound, that would wake the dead, was blaring from under our water tank. There it was, a white little fuzzball. Mama was no where to be found at this time, but she has been frequenting the shop far more often these last two weeks so we knew she would be back. Saturday the same guy who found the first kitten was working on a project and there were 2! The one from Friday and an orange one (looks like mama.) So here we are with two kittens out of four. Until Monday...when we all come back we are back down to one kitten, the orange one. We don't think too much about it, I mean these things disappeared for two weeks and are back from no where. Today, both kittens were missing. So the moral of the story is we still don't know what happened to the kittens.

Now to new items. I'll start with Andy. Andy and I have been friends since I came to the unit almost 6 years ago. We have been on stupid parking lot camp-outs, infinitely more idiotic "logistics exercise" to Korea, a trip to Cuba, a short trip to Atlanta for some engine training, and now to the desert wasteland known as Kuwait. We started as MK3s together, now I'm the MK1 acting as a chief and he's an MK2 procrastinating on making MK1 because "he doesn't want the responsibility." (Hey Andy, you already have the responsibility, get paid for it! ;)) Anyway, we've been together for a while.

When this deployment/activation started, Lynette instructed me to do these weekly updates. As you know, I started late and then would occasionally forget to do them. Also, as you know, I have set an alarm for every Tuesday to remind myself to do them. Here is where the problem begins. I set the alarm for 7:30 PM. So far, in the weeks I have had the alarm set, I have been here one time when it has gone off. Like any good alarm, I made it one of the most annoying sounds I could find...in this case it is the sound of a slot machine clanking around and spewing money. The great thing about iPhone alarms is that if you don't get to it right away because it may not be loud enough, it automatically becomes more audible so you can hear it. Oh, and it doesn't shut off until you turn it off. Enter Andy...

As you may imagine, this alarm can be very annoying if left unattended. Tonight was one of the nights I was not here to hear it. I set it for 7:30 because I figured I would be back from the gym and dinner in time to hear it go off and I could get to writing. Boy have I been wrong! Tonight I decided to stop at the MWR building and play pool with our DC2. This is just something to breakup the monotony of getting up, showering, going to breakfast, going to work, going to lunch, back to work, go to the gym, eat dinner, go to bed. Well, the alarm went off and since Andy's bunk is right on the other side of one of the walls of lockers from me, he came in to turn it off. Apparently this is a weekly occurrence for him. So when I got back to my room I had a note waiting for me on my iPhone...

I would share the contents of this note, but this is a family show. :p Andy has a pretty good sense of humor so the note was laced with passive-aggressiveness and some expletives just to spice it up. He finished it off with "Much Love, Andy." What a guy! This is all in fun so we laughed about it prior to me beginning my weekly venture into sharing with the world. Although, I'm sure it is super irritating for my alarm to be going off when I'm not here...

So on that little tidbit of storytelling, I will call it a blog. I hope you enjoy my freestyle ramblings this week...there will be plenty more where that came from. So see everyone next week!

(Now where is my phone so I can set it for 8:30... :D)