The land of powerpoint

The last two weeks in Fort Lee have been great, yet depressing. We have nice accommodations, free time, and an overall stress free environment - much different than Ft. Jackson and the Drill sgts. The best part about being here is that I am relatively close to home, so for the last two weekends I have been able to see Rachael and my family. Yet, when I come back to Ft. Lee after a weekend of normality, it’s tougher than ever to get my mind wrapped around this vacation again.

The training here consists of nothing more than classroom instruction. At 8:30am every day we go to class, sit through about 975 PowerPoint slides, and get released around 4pm. So our minds have alot of time to wander - especially my ADD riddled mind. I think it was actually easier at Fort Jackson because when you are physically engaged in tough training, your mind is focused on completing the task at hand. When you are in a warm, comfortable classroom, your mind tends to think about other things - in my case other things are home and the life I had a short time ago.

Ok at this point I'm asking myself - wow, am I really complaining about being in a hotel and seeing my family?? The point is, I wish I was in Iraq already - right now it just seems like we were called up from IRR to sit around and think about being called up from IRR (the bad part of a blog is that I am now documented as saying that, so in 6 months if I am bitching about Iraq it'll look pretty stupid). The point I am trying to make is that I can’t wait to have a more engaging and tough mission to take my mind off being away from my family. My next stop on the IRR tour should provide that, since we will be joining our actual unit and conducting mission specific training for several weeks before Iraq. I probably wont write anymore until I get there, since there is much else to say about the world of powerpoint. Oh yea – if anyone has questions or comments, please post them in the comment section. I’d love to answer any questions/comments that come to mind!