CQ - (Korea) Day 228

My workstation during my brief appointment as cashier at the DFAC.
I was manning the "Main Line" and the touch screen was how I input all the info.

Work call this morning was at 0700. The thing about roommates is that they share the same room with you. My roommate is a pretty cool guy and very nice, he just stays up late every single night. He usually doesn't get up before me, but in today's case he did. I have a fan going and I have my headphones in playing "white noise". I also wear my PT beanie over my head to cover my eyes to keep out the light from his desk lamp. Some nights are better than others, but I would guess I lose a good hour to two of sleep each night because of my roommate. I am looking forward to leaving the barracks life once I leave Korea.

Back to the rest of the day…I arrived at the office and we setup for a meeting down in the secret conference room. It was going to be the first meeting of the new commander and there were some last minute changes of course. We finally got everything setup and fixed a couple of misspelled name blocks. Then as we were getting ready to leave a marine officer came over and said "so…what would it take to get coffee for the head table?" I was thinking to myself, well sir…it would take some advanced warning, unless you want me to pull it out of my ass. Another army officer came over and said "It will only take them going up stairs and getting it". This set off a chain of crazy events. Our office including CPT Hooah!, our NCOIC, our sergeant and all the junior soldiers had to start scrambling getting all the coffee, water crafts and everything that goes with a full setup from our office which is four flights of stairs above this secret conference room. With everyone helping we were able to get it all down there, but it looked like crap when it was all setup and we were doing the setup around the generals who were already sitting at the head table. We were able to finish before the commander ended up coming though, which I was very surprised.

I then had to pull more secretary duty for my NCOIC making a lot of calls to see if people were going to come to another meeting. I really dislike doing that. As I was heading down to bring an updated list to my NCOIC, CPT Hooah! sees me and tells me to follow him because we may have to call "stand by" for a meeting. I ended up sitting with him near the secret conference room for about a half hour doing nothing except trying not to fall asleep.

I finally headed to lunch and video chatted with my wife for a bit before heading back to the office. I was able to finish one SkillPort before being handed another call list that I had to do. I know I would never want to be a telemarketer. I had to leave at 1500 and head to our company headquarters for a CQ brief. I have CQ tonight starting at 1630 until 0900 tomorrow morning. After the brief, I headed to the shoppette to pick up some supplies for my shift (drinks, beef jerky, etc). I then went back to my room for a small rest before heading to the DFAC. Something new they have added to our shift is being the cashier in the DFAC for dinner. Very strange, they would have just random people come in and do this every single day. A worker trained me on the system for about 5 minutes and then turned me loose. Not too hard, just enter in what service they are and have them enter their social security number. Only a few folks actually paid money. I then actually ate at the DFAC once the shift was over and they locked the doors. The food was much better than my previous experience at the old DFAC. It was also nice doing something other than just sitting at a desk staring at a wall for CQ.

CQ consists of mostly sitting at a small desk staring at a wall. I had to take inventory of everything in the day rooms for our barracks to make sure nothing is missing. We are also supposed to do a "security check" once an hour, which is basically doing a walk around and through the barracks to make sure all is well. I had my laptop at the desk, so I was able to watch a number of TV shows, do some SkillPorts, watch "Sniper: Reloaded" which is the 4th movie in the "Sniper" series. It wasn't too bad, of course I wasn't expecting much. I also listened to a number of podcast episodes that some old co-workers make “Tales From The SpacePod”. They are pretty funny, it's good to hear voices of friends that I haven't heard in a long time.

It's a long shift and goes until 0900 on Saturday. I ended up not drinking any coffee or Mountain Dew because I thought I would make it just fine, but at some point around 0600 I dozed off for a bit. At one point I was watching CSI, then the next thing I know my screen saver was on and the show was over. That little nap gave me what I needed to last the rest of the morning, I was able to video chat with my wife a few times throughout the night and I was even able to talk to my branch manager about my next assignment. Because of the time difference there is never a really good time to call, and every other time I've tried all I get is a busy signal or no answer. Since I had all night during my CQ shift, I thought this would be a great time to try. Surprisingly the guy was very nice and gave me my next assignment. He said he would be putting through a waiver, but that it should all show up on my ASK (Assignment Satisfaction Key) on the AKO website sometime next week. I'm not going to mention it to many people until I actually see it under my assignments on the web. I know things can change and I don't want to get too excited yet. I'm not even going to mention it on here yet….