This week I have been in a class to become a Command Financial Specialist - trained to do budgets, give counseling to servicemembers who are in over their heads, and know generally about different ways to save and invest.

The training has been very interesting; we got lucky because the class wasn’t supposed to happen due to low participation.  But because all 4 of us in attendance were from the Lincoln, they decided to go ahead with it anyway.  Because of the small class size, we have gotten a lot of “extended” training - lots of time for questions and answers and straying off topic to discuss things that otherwise we would not have had time to cover if we had a large class.  And the best part?  We generally get out early every day and can spend some time at home researching financial matters.  Like logging into your bank account to find out that your credit card number has been stolen.  Again.  OK, that was B’s catch, he truly is the financial specialist in the family.

It’s been so great going to this class because the facility we’re working out of is 9 minutes away from my front door.  This means I get to get my kids ready for school, I’m there when they get home, we have all afternoon together, I can come home for lunch and make sweet potato fries every day, and I can stop at the Commissary and buy that night’s dinner on my way out of class.  I’m really enjoying this and not looking forward to getting back to that 5 hours of commuting a day.

Anyhow, today is my last day of class and I get a certificate of completion and can go back to work on Monday to preach the value of the Thrift Savings Plan. Preach!  Lucky for me, I took leave on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday in preparation of Thanksgiving. :)  Can’t wait to make some gobbledy-good turkey!  Or to have the USS Sig Command Poultry Specialist make it for me.

This federal holiday, I had the luxury to once again wake up at 3:45 to get out the door by 4:30 to catch the ferry by 5 to sail for 2 hours to the ship to work all day.  Thrown into all the work were drills - lots and lots of drills.  That man overboard drill is about to send somebody overboard for real.  In between the meetings to prepare for the drills, the drills, and the debrief meetings after the drills was the work - including a guy who has decided he’s not going to go to work anymore.  I mean, he’s on the ship, he just doesn’t come to work.  Like, ever.  I’m really confused.  Do you go back to bed and lay in your luxurious twin-sized coffin rack?  Anyway, who knew you could stop paying someone while they’re in your office…the things I learn!

I have been working on a project for our office lately, utilizing my IT skillz (they’re so much more than skills-with-an-s) to put together a webpage on our ship’s intranet.  I have worked hard on making it not suck, and that’s a feat when the customization options are limited to choosing blue and orange or brown and tan themes.   I did manage to make it into a pretty good looking and very useful site and at the end of the day I got wind that the page made it onto the commanding officer’s radar and he was very impressed with our webpage.  Considering we’re the smallest department on the ship - a whole 8 people strong - there’s something to be said any time you do something to be noticed by the rest of the ship.  Especially good is the attention didn’t come from any of us crapping off the fantail.

So anyway, the day came to its usual sudden halt at 3:30 when we have to leave in order to catch the ferry back or else you’re stuck there overnight. Because it’s Veteran’s Day, there were a few good deals to be found for free dinner for veterans.  I was looking forward to dinner at Applebees, but by the time I got home and changed into regular clothes it was already 6:15 and the prospect of waiting in line for a free burger in a military town where every other person is a veteran suddenly didn’t seem so appealing.  So it was McDonald’s and a glass of wine, and off to bed at an unusually reasonable hour.

But today I, as most people, have thought of the meaning of the day.  Both of my grandfathers, my dad, both of my brothers, and numerous uncles and counsins have all served our country, and I’m proud to come from a family that has set the example in serving our country.  I hope that someday my children look at what our family has done and are proud of the family they come from.

Thank you to all the veterans out there - we all sacrifice something to be in the military, whether it’s for 4 years or for 20 years.  I hope those of you who are young enough perhaps consider giving a few years to serve your country - it’s one of the most important things I’ve ever done and I’m proud to continue doing it.

So on this ship right now there is only one women’s bathroom.  And it is conveniently located all the way aft; so far aft, in fact, that it might be easier just to stick my ass off the fantail and take a crap into Puget Sound.

When you said you wanted me to start blogging again, you didn’t see that one coming, did you?

So there’s that one bathroom - head, now that I’m in the real Navy - but I’ll call it a bathroom for civilian’s sake.  To go to that one bathroom, one must don one’s safety helmet and goggles and make one’s way down through the narrow hallway - passageway - through the gaggle of people waiting for medical; past the next gaggle of people waiting for new ID cards because you now have to use (and forget) your ID card to get on your computer; duck the hanging pipes and tubes and vents and anything else they can dangle above your head, only to inevitably knock your head as soon as you straighten your neck and give yourself whiplash; through the passageway where there are things sticking out of the walls just waiting to jab you in the hip when you bounce against it trying to avoid a head-on collision with a contractor pushing a cart of god-knows-what; over the “knee knockers” (raised doorways for flooding protection) where you can kiss your shoe shine goodbye; through the stinky sleeping area; and then you get all the way to the door in front of the bathroom only to find that the doorway has been taped off so they can put down a new floor in the 4 foot by 5 foot space, the one I could probably step across if given the chance.

You following?

Of course, because of how far away the bathroom is, you really only use it when you really, really have to go, so by the time you’re there you’re dancing like MJ. 

So then you have to trace the route back through the stinky sleeping area, over the knee knockers, down the hallway with the now-may-as-well-be-deadly-spikes, ducking, craning, arching and bending so as not to knock your head, and then cut across to the other side of the ship where you get to a point where you can’t proceed because it’s got blue tile down, and that means that you, as a lowly E-6, do not have the privilege of walking through said blue tile area.

So you turn around, and go back again, and now you go up the “steps” (they call them ladders here, and they’re neither ladder-ly feeling nor stair-ly feeling but rather deathtrap-ly feeling) to the hangar bay where you’re less familiar with the exit points to go back down one deck to the deck the bathroom is on.  You proceed forward and get to the fantail where you dodge hanging wires, squeeze through scaffolding while at the same point stepping over giant piles of rope, more hanging pipes threatening to decapitate you, and now you get to guess how to get down?  Do you go through that door in the hopes that there’s a stairway behind it?  Do you go through that stairway that is painted too white, which only looks suspect, like a white van that says “FREE CANDY“?  Or do you go down the shabby ladder behind the pile of cables conveniently parked right in front of it?

Well, it wasn’t behind the door, I checked.  And even I don’t accept candy from strangers.  There, at the bottom of the 3rd ladder, was the lone women’s bathroom.  Perhaps this is how the fantail got nicknamed the Poop Deck.

Isak is having a sleepover at Niki’s while Anja is at her second swim meet - her first pentathlon - while I’m at home, catching up on some sleep and rest.  While I feel bad for not being at her meet, after her last meet coupled with the last few weeks of work, I’m beat.  And I have a birthday party to go to today that involves driving an hour each way and as tired as I was, that would probably have been a dangerous prospect if I hadn’t gotten more sleep.

So yeah, work.  I’ve settled into work and am enjoying it very much.  I work with a great group of people, I’m getting involved with the ship, and I finally feel like this is why I reenlisted.  That said, everything is not roses:  my day is extremely long - I’m up at 3:45, out of the house by 4:30 for a 20 minute drive to the base and a 2 hour ferry ride to the ship.  We work our butts off until 3:30, when I do the ferry and drive back home, finishing my day around 6:00pm.  And those hours in between are crazy busy, and while I do like the pace, sometimes it’s frustrating because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done.  My job is one thing; I can handle the stuff in the office just fine.  It’s that we’re in the shipyard getting lots of repairs, upgrades, etc. and we’re trying to get ready to get OUT of the shipyards and go back out to sea.  That involves lots of training, meetings, drills, exams, and what is probably the most frustrating is the attitude of many of the people on the ship.

I’ve been disappointed with my peers.  There are a handful of very strong ones who have good attitudes and are willing to help other people out, but for every one of them there are 10 people who are lazy, negative, and some bordering on incompetent.  Them’s fightin’ words, I know, but really…more than once, I have been astounded by some of the things I’ve seen and/or heard.

Anyway…I’m finally getting into my own groove and as long as I’m surrounded by positive influences, I do enjoy myself.  I’m finally meeting people, making some friends, settling in and making the ship my second home.  It’s not quite as nice as our beautiful house that we finally moved into, but…it’ll do.

And since we’re at the present, here are yesterday’s Halloween costumes.  Anja wanted to be Coraline, but no one seemed to sell a yellow rain slicker or yellow galoshes in her size, so we made do with what we had and what we could find.  Isak was a Croc-footed Ninja, having left his black shoes at his friend’s house the night before.  How he got home, I can’t figure out, except that he is a Ninja, you know.