We had similar stupididity… we were training in MOPP suits, taking classes on proper donning and then removal of contaminated suits. There were not enough suits for one-per-man, so the class kept the suit while the students rotated though.
Half the battalion went to the field mornings, then classes in the afternoon, the other half the reverse.
It grew hot in the afternoon, so the MOPP classes were done in skivvies after a certain time.
Half the battalion went to the field… picking up poison sap on their clothes… then they took a class that afternoon, putting MOPP gear on over the poison goo… then at some point the BDUs came off…
Tada! The poor guys who took the class in skivvies got poison goo smeared all over their bare legs and arms.
The brush fires only caught one medic in the smoke clouds… when the platoon he was with was ordered back to put out a growing blaze. All we… they had were boots, to stomp and kick dirt. No one carries an e-tool on a patrol, and one quart of water per person won’t touch a brushfire.
Got a letter of commendation, I… umm… HE did.
For the past two weeks, my fiance and I were hunting for a home to rent after our wedding that’s happening in two months. Applied for two houses and while both were good, one of them was clearly better overall. We got the better house, though the rent is slightly higher. No more house hunting for us for a while.
Thanks, @ClockWorkXon. I know we may have rushed things a bit (since now we have an extra month’s rent to pay for), but rental homes around here have been getting picked up quick and we don’t want a house that’s far from our in-laws or my parents. Hopefully a hoodlum doesn’t break in between next week and when we start living in it.
I just found the knitted Christmas stocking pattern that @sig’s grandmother used to make the personalized family stockings until she couldn’t knit anymore. She couldn’t find the pattern, and neither could anyone else, so we weren’t sure we’d be able to keep up her tradition at all.
I have a lot of work to do in the next year, catching up to the newest generation.
New front brake disks and pads on the bike. Just have to remember that they’re still bedding in and that I can’t do my usual trick of “see the eyes of Odin and then brake”.
Not precisely happy, but it did give me a big smile for a while. Met a guy on the BART platform who had his four-month old baby boy fastened to his chest (aka “baby carrier”).
Well, last weekend was September, this next weekend is October. September drill was pushed back two weeks while the state scrambled to find funds to pay for it; several states outright cancelled September drill. As it was, we found out so late that a lot of people had already made plans; higher put down that commanders should exercise lenience in excusing people from drill. The net effect was that drill was basically optional.
The only thing we had on the schedule (which could be rescheduled effectively with no time to resource anything) was 8 of the 12 hours of “resiliency training” we were supposed to get this FY. So to demonstrate how seriously the Army takes resiliency training, we scheduled eight (8) hours of PowerPoint on an optional drill weekend. Yes. The Army cares deeply.
I spent my drill counting rifles and optics and other sensitive items, making up an NCOER out of whole cloth, and similar useful tasks. The optics are especially nice: ACOGs and AimPoint red dots. We have no way to mount them on our M16A2s, but at least we have nice, new rail-mount optics to physically verify at inventory each month.
We had an E-6 that was full of 4 hour training courses. He was a local police officer and was interested in a lot of semi military training.
So if everything went FUBAR and we were stuck at division headquarters he had us covered. Knife fighting, breaking out of a choke, carry methods, buddy carry methods, more knife fighting but you without the knife, how to disarm someone coming at you with a stick, all kinds of fun crap.
We got stuck a lot. We were preempted by the weather, potential weather, anyone else in the state wanting to train, whatever. I think because we got the “big armory” we were on the tail of the list for everything else, like it was some sort of privilege.
Are there any armories anymore that are still used by reserve forces or National Guard?
It seems like most of them are now in use by other organizations (often commercial). I’ve seen quite a few being auctioned on the GSA site (how the feds got a local armory is beyond me).
The one here is owned by an “adult-oriented” company. I don’t know if it is the “old” armory and there is another somewhere or not.
A few of the ones in Indiana are. But there are also a lot of towns that don’t have a national guard presence that still have the old buildings. I’ve seen some that look like they are community centers now or YMCAs, and the really old castle looking ones are always fun.
The one downtown Indy is a recruiting center I think.
There is one about a mile from where I work that is still active. It’s (in)famous for an incident in the mid-90s where a guy broke in and stole a tank. Made for good TV though as the cops were chasing him down I-805. They were only able to stop him because he tried to go across the center divide at a 45 degree angle and got hung up on the concrete barrier (which he would have smashed right through at a 90 degree angle).
I remember that (as does probably everyone else who watched TV even once in the 90s). It’s one of those stories that sounds hilarious and awesome (he stole a tank! fuck yeah TANKS) until you dig into the how and why, and then it’s just heartbreaking.
