It's true!!! We have reached a milestone here... 3 months have now passed since the last day I set foot on American soil! That means from here on it's time to start counting DOWN instead of UP! I feel like I might have been blogging some of the same crap over and over, though, and if I have then I apologize. It's very difficult sometimes for me to come up with something new when there's really nothing new happening. It's basically the same 7 days cycle. We can start with Sunday, since that is the official beginning of the week.
Sundays are busy... and usually a blur. I wake up at 5:30 on Sunday mornings (Sunday is an evening Skype day for the wifey and I). I go use the restroom and brush my teeth just as most people do when they wake up... at least I would hope most of you do anyway! hehe I get changed into my uniform and roll out between 5:50 and 5:55 AM. I stop at the Green Bean for a morning Cup of Joe on my way to eat breakfast. I leave the dining facility for work around 6:25 with a 6:35 arrival at work in time for the 6:40 morning brief. After the brief I refill my coffee cup and head out to my first of 3 two-hour shifts for the day. After the first one I go and get a quick workout in... using as much time as I have available. I'm gone for almost 2 hours, but it only results in about 30-40 minutes of available workout time by the time I walk home... change... stretch... workout (30-40 minutes)... shower... change back... and walk back in time for shift number 2. After the second shift it's time to go eat lunch at 1:00 PM. I generally get there closer to 1:30 by the time I get moving and get back around 2:15. That only leaves 45 minutes to unwind before shift 3. I go out for the last shift and am done at 5 PM... and straight to the debrief room (debriefs start at 5.) Following the debrief I either relax for the last part of the day until it's time to leave at 7 or I go grab dinner around 5:30 if I'm hungry enough to eat by then. Also, every Sunday with either the lunch or dinner meal I enjoy a nice bowl of ice cream in honor of Ice Cream Sunday. :) I take off at 7 and hurriedly walk back to get changed and go straight to the shower room to shave so that I'm ready for bed. Because 8 PM is SKYPE TIME on Sundays!!! After that I just chill in the room and usually watch whatever football games come on at 9 unless it's the STEELERS then I stay up and watch till midnight or later.... and that's Sunday in a nutshell.
That leads us to Monday... another 5:30 AM wakeup for me. I work the early shift on Mondays, so I do the usual... and have coffee in hand enroute to breakfast. After my shift ends at 11 AM on Monday mornings I chill out for a little while in our "Ops Shack"... the Ops Shack is basically our place to relax and get on the computer and/or watch TV or play video games while we're not working out on the floor. You could say it's the place to unwind I suppose. Everyone needs that in their days, too. Believe me!!! After eating lunch at around 11:45... and getting back around 12:30... I usually do whatever I need to do for the day during the next hour and a half. If I don't have any admin stuff to work on then I do things like write my blog... email my wife and friends... pay my bills online... etc. Around 2:00 or so I start moving to go and work out. I usually spend a minimum of 65 minutes on the treadmill (Yesterday was 75) during this time. I run most of it and walk some of it. It's one of my more intense workout days. I usually get back to work around 4:40 or so and hit the debrief at 5. On Mondays I typically go to dinner, which is fajita night at the dining facility. By the time I get back it's well after 6 and almost time to head out again for the day. There is no planned Skype time for us on Mondays, so I am usually shaved and either laying on my bed by 8 or I go to the recreation center with my roommate for a little while and just hang out there with the laptop. I get into bed and read by about 9:30... and get to sleep sometime between 10 and 10:30.
Tuesdays are my late show day every week... which means I go to work at 10:30 in the morning instead of 6:40. That's a nice little break! I do, however, get up at 4:45 to go Skype with Anne Marie at 5 on Tuesday mornings. We usually talk till about 6 and then I go back to bed. I wake up around 9ish and start my day with a coffee and whatever I have for breakfast in the room or a muffin from the Green Bean. I go to lunch about an hour after getting into work and get back around 12:30. I don't work out on Tuesdays, so I have more time at work to get some stuff done if need be. As you can see... today this is what I'm doing during that time (since today is actually Tuesday!) :) I sit scope at 3... until the night crew comes to relieve us sometime shortly after 7 PM. Then it's dinner time and eventually bedtime around 10.
Wednesday is my least favorite day of the week... It's is by all means my MONDAY over here by far. It starts out like a somewhat normal day. I get up at 4:45 to go Skype with Anne Marie at 5. I get my coffee and walk to work between 6:20 and 6:25 to get here on time, of course! After the morning brief I head out to get breakfast and generally get back sometime before 8. At 9 o'clock I sit in the command post because it's the regular guy's day off... so there are 4 of us who take our turn sitting in there. For whatever reason, sitting in there stresses me out severely. I always feel like I'm giong to get stuck there for longer than I feel I should be in there and then it screws the rest of my day up. I'm supposed to get relieved at 11:30, which would work great for how I plan my afternoon, but it doesn't work on a clockwork schedule as such. Last Wed. it was almost 12:30... which didn't give me the time I needed to be able to comfortably get in my workout and eat lunch after. I had to woof down a footlong Subway Steak and Cheese sub in about 7 minutes. I felt horrible during my shift... from 3-7ish again. I do not normally go eat dinner on Wednesdays as I'm not very hungry yet at 7, and I'm simply tapped out from being stressed out all day.
Thursdays are pretty good, though... and it usually only takes me until Wednesday evening to unleash the stress from earlier in the day. Sometimes even the workout on Wed. afternoon takes care of that! I get up at 4:30 on Thursday mornings to Skype with Anne Marie at 4:45. We usually talk until just after 5:30 and then I go get ready for work. I get my coffee and breakfast before work as I sit the early shift. After my shift the day is pretty much identical to Monday. Lunch, a good late afternoon workout, dinner, and back to the room.
On Fridays I wake up at 4:30 also... for the 4:45 Skype date. Fridays are quite similar to Sundays. They are a blur. 3 shifts... 7-9... 11-1... and 3-5. The workout between first and second I leave as optional for myself because sometimes I'm in too much pain from the previous 2 days of intense work to do it a 3rd day in a row. I usually do, though. The only difference is I do not eat ice cream on Fridays... and sometimes I don't eat dinner until after work because I know I can sleep in on Saturday morning with having the day off and all. :)
That brings us to FANTASTIC Saturday!!! Yes... it's what I work all week for... the coveted day off!!! I'm generally pretty tired come Friday night, so I don't stay up very late... about 10:30 or 11 tops. I wake up at 8 on my day off. One may ask... WHY??? You have the day off... yet you don't sleep all that late. Well... if you notice I've been getting up at 4:30 the past 2 days... so 3 1/2 hours of extra sleep really is A LOT! Besides the dining facility closes for breakfast at 8:30, and Saturday is my omelet day! I eat my tasty bacon... hash browns... sausage... french toast sometimes... omelet... on Saturday morning. Mmmmmmm!!! Before that, however, I stop by the gym and step on the scale for my weekly weigh in. (A person thing... nothing official for the military... just to clarify). It's Saturday when I do my laundry as well... right after breakfast. Sometimes I go and call my dad while my laundry is going as well. I've chatted with my sister on Skype in my room during this time, too. I do whatever I feel like doing on my days off. I've gone to Ciano's, the Italian restaurant on base, and had calzone or pizza. I go to the movies sometimes. I walked to the Post Office one day... to the BX other times... I've only had 5 days off in my 3 months here, and they've all been Saturdays. I do not sit around in my room all day by any means, though! That's not my way of enjoying a day off. That's for sure! :) I even worked out this past Saturday for the first time out of 5. Anne Marie and I usually Skype at 6:30 my time on Saturdays. It works quite well. It's very enjoyable and relaxing to have that day to recover from the busy nature of the weeks here. Then by 10 or so it's bedtime and the end of yet another week in the desert....
So there you have it... a typical week in my deployed life here. As you can see there is a lot of routine built into it. I think it's important to have a routine when you're in a place like this and doing what we do here. Without it you kind of become lost and cause yourself a lot of unnecessary stress. It's not always perfectly set like that... but it's pretty darn close! It's also this routine that makes it seem like Groundhog Day every day because the days each week are so very similar. Not to mention, the dining facility serves the same menu on the same day each week as well. It's all part of the built in routine of Groundhog Day. Even the weather contributes to it. There literally has hardly been a single cloud in the sky for the last 40 days now. It's been between 70 and 80 during the day and in the 40s at night... every single day. It's gorgeous actually! I'm definitely not complaining at all!
Well... that's really it for today... happy reading and blogging everyone! It's a nice long one for you to enjoy. :)
Peace, Love, and Poker
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