Laggin and a Draggin thru February

Ugh, is it March yet? Please?

I know I haven’t been updating as frequently as I would’ve liked to, but when you throw a crazy amount of paperwork at me, and then send me on mission? Yeahhhh I’m gonna be catching up on my procrastination for a couple weeks!

It is official, the end is coming closer and closer. Here’s how I don’t need a calendar to know this:

1. People are bickering and picking fights with one another wayyyy too often.

2. I’ve been tasked with putting together and MCing the company’s end of deployment award ceremony.

3. I’ve sat thru a briefing where I had to be told that I “am not supposed to physically harm or threaten” my significant other, that I ”can’t have sex all the time” and I must let my “significant other be in charge until reacclimated.”  When asked one of my Soldiers replied, “I’m 24, I’m single and I’ll let the physically harm part of it come from my pants.” Army boys are fucking geniuses.

It will be wonderful to come home to CT, but sometimes I get ahead of myself. I’m trying so hard to focus on the task at hand and get all 43 of us out in one piece, but at the same time looking forward to what is a bright future. My personal life has always been lived on a whim…with a couple of minor scheduling conflicts coming up (like, um, a deployment to Kuwait?), but now that I’m trying to set myself up for success, I’m really having trouble focusing out here. I’m lucky to have friends, family and a wonderfully supportive girlfriend to not only ease the transition, but force me to realize that there is plenty of time to figure things out…just one step at a time.

I’m currently looking for a temporary summer sublet in the New Haven area. If any of you know of anything…hook your boy up.

I’m going in for my seventh tattoo in April as well. I have plans on doing it at the same tattoo shop in Groton that did a few of my other pieces. If I can’t slate it there, my boy Bones in Vegas said he’ll do it if I’m willing to do it every other day. That doesn’t really fit into my plans, but if I can get him to do the outlining immediately, I can come back over May and July (when I have to report to duty and prove I haven’t killed myself/gone crazy) and color/shade/alter it. I plan on this being my Sistine Chapel. Something I can add and touch up, but never recreate anywhere else on my body. It was originally a sleeve from the neckline of the top of my right shoudler to my right wrist, but I’ve redesigned it so that it wraps around my right shoulder blade and bicep all the way to a half-inch above the elbow. I’m eventually going to get out of this uniform, and don’t want to wear long sleeves the rest of my life. Not in the professional world.

Oh wow. BIG DEVELOPMENT: I’ve been selected by the brigade (a total of two battalions, which is a total of eight companies, which is a total of 1500-2000 Soldiers) to be interviewed by Dan Rather on our specific job in Iraq! Wow. Friday morning he’ll sit down with me, the ‘regular Soldier’ and talk all things regarding my job. CRAZY.

edit: I have to meet with a public affairs representative to discuss what I can and can’t say on the air. Clearly my first question will be something along the lines of, “Do I get a trailer?” or “Do I get a makeup girl?”

Back to reality: I’m just excited to come home. Once we’re thru February, it’ll just be a matter of time before my replacements show up and we start teaching them everything we’ve done over the last year. And then….time to get those wheels up and that plane in the air. My head is spinning.

Mike

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