New Year!

Ok, I'm still alive and kicking.

I'm home, on forced leave from work, a simple technicality that lead to a SNAFU, typical governmet agency. HR sends me on leave and then they list the reason I'm on leave in my file as something totally different then why I was really sent on it.

I'm not sweating it, although they're kind of pissed that I haven't told 'em what I'm doing, hell, I didn't want to be on leave to begin with so they're just going to have to deal with it. Not only that, all the times I've put in for time off and was denied, I'm making up for it now.

I'm glad to be off the ship, nothing but drama. Not only that but the Navy was trying to enforce it's rules it set forth for it's regular sailors on us CIVMARS (civilian mariners). Not hard to tell that they were created to keep the 18 year old kids that have never been on their own before in line, which tends to be insulting to those of us who are mature and those who have kids that are of that age to begin with.

The Gulf was almost pure torture, having to stand outside for 4 to 8 hours at a whack without air conditioning, on a steel deck, wearing dark blue pants and long sleeve shirt and steel toed leather boots, let's just say it would have been drier to have taken a shower not to mention cleaner. We spent even less time in port since the carrier battle group we were attached to was part of the "surge" that took place over the summer and was running extremely high tempo ops. Myself and one of the other UNREP helmsman was almost left behind one afternoon when the powers that be decided they were going to change our departure time at 10 am when we'd left the ship at 9 am. Only thing that kept us from spending the next three days on shore was the delay in getting a harbor pilot.

Getting spoiled traveling first class, been coast to coast a few times since october and I have nothing really to spend my money on.

There's been a lot of deep contemplations I'd ponder standing watch at 4 am in the pitch black of the bridge wings, but everytime I've gone to write 'em done the thought has passed from my mind.

I'll probably be posting some new pics over the next few posts, nothing special, to me anyways, just shots of home that caught my eye.