Camp Bullis

Well, I finally made it here. I had a decent four hour bus ride from Fort Hood yesterday to down town San Antonio. When I got there I was supposed to call one of the numbers they gave me. I did. No answer. I called the Sgt in charge of me from fort hood. She made some calls and told me that they couldn't get ahold of anyone either, so I should get a cab out to Camp Bullis and stay in lodging and try again first thing in the am. So I get in a cab and get a call fro the OIC (officer in charge) back at fort hood. He said to go back to the bus station and someone would come get me. By the time someone showed up to get me I had been sitting there about three hours. Argh. Anyway, I got settled into our little "hutment" as they call it. not too bad. We did CPR recertification so far today. Tomorrow is when we really get going. The down side of this place though is that I have no cell phone service. Anyhoo...that's what's up. :-)

Briefings.

So Today was mandatory briefings day. I sat through hours of briefings and am now very well educated. I should definitely not sell secrets to the enemy. I should not sexually assault anyone. I should keep an eye out for terrorists. Under no circumstances am I to bomb and elementary school or shoot a little old lady minding her own business. I can't torture people. I will indeed be getting paid. And as unbelievable as it is to Uncle Gary...I am not allowed to consume any alcohol until I'm off of active duty.

We then went to dental where I sat around for a couple hours to not need a screening, and then got to pee in a cup to find out that I don't use drugs. All in all a very productive day. :-)

I know we're doing something tomorrow, but I don't know what. Cheney is coming to visit the base so the base is locked down from 0630 until he leaves. So getting to Camp Bullis for my training on Wed isn't looking so likely. Oh well. So goes Army life. It was 91 degrees here today. Anyway, I'm off to relax! Love!

Roaches!

First off I'm really annoyed because I took a bunch of pictures and now I can't get them to pull up at this computer in the internet cafe. stink. anyway. I flew out yesterday at 7am and the whole day was pretty uneventful. I arrived here and was issue linins and a room and that was fine. We had the afdternoon off, so we went to the PX and went shopping and then back to the room and watched a movie. During the movie I decided to get up and shower so I could sleep in.

So, I go in there and there is this big bug on the shower curtain. Yuck. It's a roach. So it goes down the toilet. I get in the shower and another one appears. Yuck. In the toilet. I get out and dry off and another one shows up. All in the shower. Yuck. In the toilet. So I go out and tell my roommates about it and they kinda wig. So after a while my roommate Amber decides to shower. She goes in there and the coast looks clear, but I tell her from the other room to shake the shower curtain, as that's where I found two of them. She does. LOOOUD screams follow. For onto the shower floor fall six more roaches.

So she comes out and is all freaking out. At this point my other roommate and I are enjoying a good laugh at her expense. This goes on for a while and then I say that she should go find a guy and tell them there is A bug in our shower and ask him to kill it. Just to see what he does with the infestation. So she goes and get's this 18 year old thinks he's a superhero guy. He comes strutting in to save the day and goes in there and all but sceams like a little girl. he's freaking out and now we're all laughing hysterically.

He tries to scoop them top flush them but they scurry towards him and he wigs out. :-) He eventually squashed them and it was fine, but it was definately some comic relief. We've had a few more show up one by one, but nothing major....Until shower time....

IPod Mania!

My sister calls it IPod mania...this recent obsession I have. I got a really nice IPod for my birthday earlier this month and pretty much since then I've been putting a ton of music on it. like all the time. Music, books on tape, tv shows... you know, enough to keep me entertained for a year. :-) So here I am at 730am on a saturday, my last day here, still loading CD's while the reat of the house sleeps peacefully. dork. :-)

Processing

So I was told yesterday that I needed to report to the armory with all of my gear at 10am. So i arrived promptly at 9:50 (proud that I wasn't late) and realized that what I hadn't been told was that I needed to be in Uniform. Woopsie. :-) so what I expected to be about an hour or two thing turned into a 5 hour ordeal. Nothing moves fast in the military.

We had a PCI (pre-combat inspection). Basically that means that I take anything the Army has ever issued me and dump it on the floor, along with everyone else, and we take an inventory. To give you an idea of the volume, this was three duffle bags, one giant rucksack, and a back pack full of gear and clothes. The idea is to make sure that no one accidentally forgets anything. It's good in that way, but it's also a time-consuming pain. So we did that, dis some personnel paperwork, and got these giant rubbermaid boxes to take as footlockers.

Then were told that we had to drive up to cleveland to get our medical records and sign for them as well as drop off some of our gear to be shipped down to Texas. This was actually good news ( the shipping at least) because I had been dreading lugging all that junk through airports and around an Army base. I finished all this up in time to run home, shower and run to work. late. :-)

I left early though and after chowing on Chinese food with my brother I'm off to go crack Allie's back for her and watch T.V. I'm Tired. :-)

My flight leave at 7:15am on Sunday. 33 hours and counting...

ARGH!! The Army.

So yesterday I'm just minding my own business and I get a call from my readiness NCO (the sergent in charge of me) that plans have changed and it turns out that I need this predeployment medic class and therefore I won't be leaving on Sunday, but maybe some time in march. This preceeded to put me in an extremely pissy mood for the rest of the day. I really hate being jerked around. Anyhoo, I take the day to get used to the idea, and pout. So I get up this morning and first thing I get a call from Sgt Moore that Sunday is back on. Argh! I mean, I'm glad, but it's all such a mess. So I fly out on Sunday, (3 days) but I still have no orders and no flight information.

I'm headed down to Fort Hood, TX on Sunday, then from there back to Fort Sam Houston where I did my AIT to do a three week predeployment refresher course. I really have no idea what's going on past that, and history shows that even that could change tomorrow. Argh! :-)

Come On Along With Me...

Hi All!

I'm sitting here at my mom's house, also known as the mysterious black hole of cell phone service, and setting things up so that you can come along with me on my next big adventure. I can post pictures and keep an online journal so you can keep up with me as I go to Kuwait, I leave for MOB in 7 days. Love ya!
Bri