Mail Call

Every day before we go to bed we change back into uniform and form up at 1450. The actual formation is at 1500 but they call fall in ten minutes prior to every formation and if you ain't there then you are marked FTR(failure to report) during the roll call. An FTR will result in at the least extra duty if not phase back. If the right Sergeant is on duty when you do it you could even get a negative counseling which will keep you from winning honor grad or distinguished honor grad.

I took this picture in formation while roll was being called. If you look to the left you will notice what looks like two ramps coming out of the windows on the second and third floor. Both latrine 2 is closed right now and DPW(department of public works) is doing maintenance. They use those rams to allow them to throw stuff out the window and into a dump truck they sometimes park there.

Another thing to notice is the painted rocks and raked sand. Those rocks are painted regularly and the sand is raked daily. Raking sand is one of those details they make people do when they want to waste their time but have ran out of things for them to clean. This is a daily occurrence.

Here at this formation Brown(old guy, aka "dad") finally got his off post packet and one of his POV packets back. The Army, or maybe just Ft Gordon, has a way of loosing paperwork at random. Never disciplinary paperwork, but always stuff that has to do with more privileges. You have to put in a packet off all sorts of information on your house if you want to move out of the barracks. This allows married soldiers to live with their wife and children while in AIT. Brown's wife moved here over a month ago. They have lost his packet several times, for some reason they signed it this time. He also got one of his POV(privately owned vehicle) packets back. A POV packet contains everything from prof of insurance to a record of the depth of tread on each tire. It was also lost once and he had to resubmit it. Just the sphere length and number of signatures required makes it prohibitive. When they called his name he ran up like a little kid. He has been daily inquiring about it till they finally did it two months late. It took him all of twenty minutes to call his wife to bring the car over and empty out his wall locker. We now have two blank lines on our room roster.

On Thursday last week we came back from class to discover that someone had stolen our broom. Below is a picture of the really trashy broken broom that Wilson "creatively acquired" today to replace it. We have to seep several times daily to keep our room up to standard. For right now we are keeping it in one of the spare wall lockers. Hopefully tomorrow one of us will walk to the PX(post exchange, think military walmart) and buy a real one.

And lastly I put a picture of Dean and Townes in Dean's bed sharing something on their hard drives. Because of the real lack of things to do here many have HUGE movie collections on hard drive. Both of them have been here just two months and already have over 1.5Tb of media. The sad part is they have probably watched all of it.

This morning in class after I finished a test and had to sit there waiting for Brown to finish his practical I read Proverbs 26 several times. Verse twelve jumped out at me. "Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him." It was encouraging because I have been down because I feel like a complete fool with no answer for everyone around me. No matter what I say to them they continue to give me advice. For example right now... Townes is telling me that my decision to have my parents to be completely involved in any relationship that would result in marriage is stupid. How I need to go out seeking and and dating. Garza is over here saying that I should just sin on the weekend and then repent the next Sunday. His nose is huge. I can't keep from looking at it. I wish I had a satisfying answer to tell them so they would just shut up.

We got out and ran with SFC Albers today. In forty five minutes we ran just under seven miles. If anything the one thing I've noticed is that the more we run every day the faster I am recovering. I hope after the race on Sunday we can continue to run during regular pt instead of doing conditioning drill one. Even FM21-20(standard Army pt) is rather lame. CD1 has to be the most retarded PT ever.

For closing, today marks one month exactly before Thanksgiving, I can't wait to see everyone again.