Fall Cleanup - (Germany) Day 314

The results of our fall cleanup for our building. Lots of junk and a bunch

of bags full of leaves.  This pickup spot is located on our neighboring

building's curb...they haven't cleaned up their leaves yet.

This morning for PT I headed to the gym as usual with the profiles. I'm not sure what the normal folks did since we left before they got started, but today is normally a cardio day. Speaking of cardio...I had a pretty good cardio workout on the stationary bike.

Work call this morning was actually in front of my building at 0900 instead of the office. This week is fall cleanup, with each building coordinating with their tenants to work one of the days. My building happened to be today. It's not actually a bad thing, I don't have to leave the house early and I get to wear civilian clothes. I met up with our supreme building commander (not sure what his actual title is, but he is the highest ranking in our building…so he is the guy in charge). All of PHV is slowly starting to shrink in terms of population and our building is no exception to this. At one end of the building there is only one family living in the stairwell, which can hold six families. In my stairwell there are four families and at the other end I believe there 5, for a total of 10 families in a building that can hold 18. Out of the 10 families, only 3 people showed up for the cleanup at first. About half way through a couple more showed up to help.

We started by just taking a walk through the attic areas and the basement areas of our building. The common areas are places which seem to attract junk that people just leave after they PCS. Our supreme building commander asked if any of the stuff laying around was ours, but nobody claimed it. He wants to make sure the stuff is not somebody's that is living here before he tosses it. We did haul out a few items we could tell were just junk (i.e. a broken mirror). Everything was placed next to the curb for pickup by someone else.

We were then given a rake or a large broom to start cleaning up around our building. I took a rake, put in my headphones and started making big piles of leaves while rocking out, not a bad way to spend the day…in fact much better than sitting in the office, sitting in a chair, looking at a wall. Once we finally completed all the sweeping and raking, we were given a bunch of large bags to put all the debris in. Once all the bags were full and taken to the curb with all the other junk, we were finished. 

I headed to my house and ate lunch. I then took a nap on my couch, much better than my car LOL. I then did schoolwork for a while, taking advantage of the extra time I have and waited for my wife to get home from work. One other item of note, I was introduced to a band called Rock Sugar, a very unique band that does a mash up of songs that I grew up on. It's very strange to hear the lyrics of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" sang to Metallica's "Enter Sandman". You can check out their facebook page here. Not a bad day, we got a lot of stuff done and I only had to work half of a day.

Here's the video for Rock Sugar's "Don't Stop The Sandman"

Getting Counseled - (Germany) Day 308

A picture I took on the way to work. I hear fall cleanup is coming soon

and we have a lot of trees that loose their leaves on PHV!

This morning for PT we formed up for accountability, then stretched for about 3 minutes before being released. Because everyone in the formation has a PT test tomorrow, they didn't want to do any sort of a workout. I'm not gonna complain, I was able to spend some extra time with my wife this morning and get ready at a leisurely pace.

At work this morning we were all told to "scrub" our folders. Scrubbing our folders includes taking each of our customer's folders and checking all the paperwork in them. We have to make sure they are all up to date on their briefings and everything else is in order. I spent most of the morning going through mine and contacting the people that need to get their briefings updated. There were a couple other minor issues, so I documented everything and then filed them all away. I then had to add some more ComSec inventory to a safe. Of course once a safe is opened, we had to take a full inventory of the thing.

I headed home for lunch again today, not to run any errands, but because we had some good leftovers I wanted to eat! Back at the office I spent the rest of the afternoon surfing the web. The megastorm "Sandy" is dominating the news as it pounds the east coast. Usually I don't look at job postings, but just for the heck of it I checked out some, it's good to know what kind of qualifications they are looking for, so I can make sure to be ready by the time I get out.

We cleaned up around 1630 and while we were waiting to be released, I was called back into the vault. The new NCO was told to give me my monthly counseling. My boss is still on leave and everyone in the office needs a monthly counseling. It doesn't matter if it's a quality counseling, it just needs to be done. So this NCO that doesn't know me at all has to give me a counseling for a month of work, and he doesn't know a thing about me really. He has me sit with him in the vault and starts talking to me to try and get to know me a little. He basically has to get enough information from me, so he can write up a counseling statement. We chatted until 1700, then he released me…everyone else had left earlier. I couldn't care less about the counseling, for others it lets them know their strengths and weaknesses. It gives them a course of action to improve and a path to strive for to become a leader and an NCO. I played along and let him give me the pep talk. This is just another one of those things that are making sure a box is checked so everyone's happy, just like all the crappy army training we are required to do.

Early Off - (Korea) Day 339

Fall is in the air...my walk back to work after my lunch break.
I think most of the trees in Seoul are located on Yongsan Army Garrison!

So today I woke up at 0430, shaved and put on my uniform…ready for room inspection at 0500. Our room was inspected by a female SFC this time. I stood and held the door open (because you can't have the door closed when there is a female in the room) while she walked around and told my roommate all the stuff that was dirty. She left and that was it. I don't even know what she was pointing at and I don't really care…just glad it didn't last too long.

Work call was 0630 this morning, we had to setup for a KUB in our conference room. Once finished setting up, I headed to Starbucks for a mocha, but I mixed it up a little with actual breakfast and got biscuits & gravy from the American Eatery in the food court. Ironically the American Eatery is run completely by Koreans just like every other shop in the food court.

Once back at work I ate up in the conference control room while watching TV. When it came time for the meeting to start I stayed there and flipped slides. Once it was finished we cleaned up and immediately setup for another meeting in our conference room. This time SPC Mick ran the computer and I hung out just in case somebody needed something. When the meeting was over we cleaned up and then headed out for lunch.

I went to my room as usual and video chatted with my wife. Back at the office I just watched some TV until 1400 when I drove our new KATUSA to the housing office. He needed to fill out some paperwork for his pending move to our barracks since he's still in the temporary barracks. Once our old KATUSA leaves, he's going to take his room.

When we got back it wasn't too long before our NCOIC called us down and told us to clean up and head out early. We left a little after 1500 which was pretty cool. I went to my room and changed for the gym, but decided to go eat first. I ran into PV2 Charlie and our new KATUSA and we all headed to the food court and shared a pizza. I then bought everyone some ice cream for dessert. I picked up some items from the PX and the shoppette before heading back to my room. In order to miss the gym rush hour I decided to watch an episode of Falling Skies, then do some schoolwork before heading to the gym. Once back I watched an NCIS: LA.

Status of my PCS move: I sent an email this morning to S1 asking for the status of my orders. I received a reply stating that "since my DEROS is in November, they will look into it for me". Well no crap I'm leaving in November, I've been trying to get everything in order for months now. The army moves at a snails pace. I also learned that the lady who is working on my packet is leaving and was told who is replacing her. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing, I guess time will tell.