For the Day

So ever since we pulled out of Norfolk, which I believe was on the night of the 13th, I've been going from 6am until normally around .... well it's 11pm now, so yea. Makes for a really interesting day that's for sure. By the time it's time to call it quits; feet are sore, legs hurt from the ladder-wells (stairs) and the drink that you keep thinking about is out in the distance.
Today was a pretty normal day, a few calls to fix some minor issues, put a nice new copy(image) onto a few notebooks that we own, and even re-did my inventory for accuracy. Nothing like running back and forth a hundred yards a couple of times a day to help some one you work with. Most of the day was spent with a new guy that just checked in who recently returned from a 7 month tour in Iraq. With the rise (need) for more forces overseas there is an abundance of navy/marine corps stories. Very interesting stuff to me and sometimes even a bit traumatizing.
We had another vert-rep today, which just means we took on a lot of cargo (food/supplies/ect) via Helo. I think we did somewhere over 200 pallets worth or so that will be going ashore to Haiti. I believe the call on the ship for that working party was 150 personal that were E-5 and Below and 200 Marines as well. Out here we all share the work. We did get a slight schedule change now that might land us back in Norfolk around the very end of March to possibly mid-April. Kind of depressing for me, and really depressing for the crew of the USS Bataan and the 22 Meu as well. Both crews just returned 3 months ago from a seven month deployment. So being out here for another four after only a month off wasn't the best thing to happen. Still a good number of people down here with us though. A lot of non-profit organizations on shore trying to get things set up and stable, which I believe is the reason we are still here.
After a long day, it was ended by helping take down the laundry for our small crew of guys. If there was ever a place to sweat and loose weight, it will defiantly be in ships laundry if not in the engineering spaces. One bad thing is, you have to take down so much laundry (35lbs+) or they won't take it. The other is that for some reason, it's never completely nice and dry. O, you have to go up one flight of stairs walk about 75 to a 100 yards, then go down four flights of stairs. Now over the years I’ve gotten smart about when i put my dirty clothes into ships laundry. I learned very quickly that the best bet you have is to always add a full cap of liquid laundry detergent to some piece of clothing in that load. You figure when the ship is doing laundry, they also put in about 5 to 8 bags of other people’s clothes. =D So, about 2 hours later after dropping off the 3 bags of other peoples clothes I go back down to pick them up. Luckily for us it was only a few hours instead of at the end of the day. Now in the 30 minutes I was down there I could almost swear I dropped a good 2lbs in sweat. But, more than half of my whites still came out of the dryer a bit damp. I’d almost like to assume that when we get underway, those industrial size washers and dryers are turning most of the day. I also learned that most of the people in the Corps get a pretty penny when they re-enlist. Even the grunts can get up to 70k for their service. Now I’m sure after last year and the budget cut to the military that it has all changed, but still interesting to know those guys who really put their life in the field get paid a bit of money for it.
Not to bad for one day in the life of the Navy. Big ups to my man DeTrend and the Breaks!! Never a disappointment when you tune in. Ya’ll should check out the show he streams every Friday night: www.wix.com/detrend/detrendradio
FEELIN LIKE I’M SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD!!!!!! YEA YEA!!!