Post date: Nov 25, 2011 9:34:26 AM
(Original Date: Monday, October 4, 2010)
Those of us “lucky” enough to have a re-inspection formed out outside of our rooms a little before 10:00 AM. The sergeant came to our room first and Pvt. LD’s locker was a hot mess. Things were crowded everywhere and his second drawer was full of clothes instead of toiletries per the SOP, so the sergeant said he has another inspection at noon. The sergeant looked and mine and because I didn’t have a “brass card” I was told I will have another inspection at noon as well. The brass card is actually in the SOP book, but our last roommates said we didn’t need it. I have actually passed a previous locker inspection without one, so I didn’t even think to add it. (A “brass card” is a small index card that you place your pins on from your class A uniform) After the sergeant was done he gave all of us brass cards that didn’t have one already. There were about half of the re-inspections from this morning that had to get brass cards. At noon he came by and checked our lockers again, this time finally they were up to standard. Fun times in the army.
Spent the rest of the day for the most part just hanging out in the barracks. Watched some TV episodes on my laptop as well as a pretty good movie called “Pride and Glory”. It stars Edward Norton who I think is a great actor. A police drama about NYPD officers and corruption. It was perfect timing too because our Russian teacher in our last class was always telling us how the cops in NY are all corrupt. Nothing valuable ever stays at a crime scene and they will shake down one drug dealer and sell the drugs to another around the corner. Needless to say he didn’t care for the NYPD too much.
I had the chance to speak to my best friend since 7th grade this weekend. I haven’t spoken to him since before basic, so it was nice to be able to catch up with him. Sometimes when you’re trapped in this training environment you can forget that there is an entire world out there just moving along without you.
I ended up spending most of the weekend in the barracks because I have felt like I’m not really getting this class I’m in. I split my time between studying for my CPN class with breaks for a show or movie to rest my brain. I studied my notes and also went over the slides again. I’m not sure what the problem is (some call our CPN class - Certified Place to Nap). It could be the comfortable chairs, the warm classroom, the fact that we cannot drink anything (including Mountain Dew), we cannot eat anything, the dry subject matter, the death by power point every day, or just that the teacher has a monotone voice and also somewhat of an accent that makes him a little hard to follow (i.e. he was talking about broadcast domains and called them broke ass domains - everyone in the class had a good laugh). I cannot stay awake in class at all. I have fallen asleep every day without fail. I’ll wake up and look at my screen and I’m about 5 slides behind, I look up again and repeat. I think I’ll end up having to teach myself most of this class and hope to do well on the upcoming test.
I am implementing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy this weekend. I was supposed to be punished with a 6 hour hall guard shift each day for the candy bar incident on Friday. I’m not going to ask them about it and the PG didn’t change the schedule or tell me anything. So I didn’t have to do any extra shifts, which is good because it was all over a simple mistake. I’m sure the sergeants have heard every kind of excuse there is, but if I was really trying to hid them they would have never found them.
Went to recall formation without incident and arrived back and took a long hot shower. Now it’s time to prepare for the week ahead. At least it’s a short week because of the upcoming holiday.