the Army Giveth, and the Army Taketh Away

I spent the last two days moving all my crap up and down stairs and from one end of the hanger to the other. Two days ago our company found out that 30 people from another unit were going to move in with us for the rest of the deployment, and we had two days to make room for them. This hanger had about 60 rooms made of hastily contructed plywood dividers when we got here. Since there were only 30 of us, most of us recently knocked down walls to expand our dwellings. We had it really good for about a month. Now the honeymoon is over. We have to relocate and downsize. All the crap I have accumulated over the last 6 months had to be drug off somewhere else. I still have it really good by most standards. But definatley not as good. I still have all my posh stuff like a little fridge and lots of decent furniture. I got a window now, too! And if I stand in the middle of my room, I can literally touch every single possession without having to move my feet. I'll never lose anything again! It's all crammed into a closet-sized box and the walls are so thin I can actually hear my neighbors breathing. No lie. Oh well. It's a deployment.

Just look at the difference.

Before, but with most everything moved out already.
ECHO!.....echo........echo.........




After. Cozy.
That's my bookshelf and trash can in the window sill. I had to get creative with the limited space.


So I decided to make a list of a few of the really nice things the Army has given me this deployment, and a few of the crappiest things. I'll try for ten of each.


Really nice things. In no peticular order.


1. New Free Aid Bag ($400 retail, rediculous!)
2. One year Tax Free Income plus extra pay for family sepertion, hazerdous duty pay, flight pay, and combat zone pay. woohoo!
3. A super cool free switchblade
4. A laptop to use while I'm here
5. On site gym equipment
6. A crapload of free caribeeners
7. My own room- Thank you Uncle Sam, Thank you!
8. $100 in green socks
9. An 18 day paid vacation to Alaska- in 14 days!
10. All the free food I can eat.


That's a whole lot of great stuff. And its not even all of it! I didn't even put the bi-monthly barbeques or the hot showers. But let us move on.


Some crappy things the Army did.


1. Kicked me out of the Taj Maharrell
2. Is actually charging me leave days for my R and R. Stupid commies!
3. Zero weekends, holidays, half-days, breaks, birthdays, aniversaries off. It's all day everyday baby
4. Stupid 12-hour gym-towel detail every Saturday for 3 months. Thank heaven those days are over
5. Made me buy my own drug and airway bags ($ alot)
6. Pay me less than half what they pay civilian contractees for the same job- except they work less, do less, sleep more, drive air conditioned king cab F-350's, don't get shot at, and have twice the vacation time. You two-faced cheating harlot.
7. Gave me two random urine drug tests within the last 5 days
8. Cancelled every effective training flight I had scheduled for the last 22 days. (about 15 flights) So I am still in progression
9. Revoked the right of free speech, and a few others, but I'm not allowed to talk about them.
10. The food generally sucks.


The nice things generally make up for the lame things. It depends in the day. Another perspective could be- the crappy things make the nice things seem like weak attempts at trying to buy our loyalty so the man can distract us while they're injecting AIDS into our chicken nuggets. Even so, we have had it far better than any previous generation ever did. And I appreciate those men and womens sacrifices.


Wow. I got a little worked up by that. Anyway- Any other opinions? What do my readers (both of them) like/dislike about work? Does anyone who reads my rants have any deployment pearls to add? Go ahead, talk amongst yourselves.


p.s. spellcheck isnt working today.