Day 25 - Area beautification

Typical Sunday – woke up, got breakfast, cleaned the bay from top to bottom, did laundry. I was thinking about the PT test next Saturday; my goal is to get 70% in each of the categories, which for a guy my age means 46 push-ups, 51 sit-ups, and a run time of 16:36.

“Area beautification” soon followed, with predictable methods. My job was to dig the grass out of the sidewalk cracks using my foldable shovel (called an e-tool). Not exactly how I expected the Army to use me, but I guess if that’s what they want then so be it. You can’t blame them for not being efficient -- why, after all, should the Army dish out taxpayer money for herbicide when they can just use labor they’ve already paid for?

We’re still waiting for news about white phase. It’s been, like, four weeks already, and our guidon’s still carrying that red banner, but we’re getting more time to eat and we’ve got a Platoon Guide now – a recruit that acts as the platoon sergeant and takes us around everywhere. Those are positive signs.

Being platoon guide is an unenviable job, if only because you have to stand last in line at the dining facility. By extension, you can figure out that he only gets about five minutes to eat once he sits down. That alone would be enough to make me want to get fired.

Tonight we got into some trouble. Several guys (not me) got cheeseburgers at the DFAC, including a few fellows who, shall we say, didn’t need the extra calories. So, the drill sergeant decided that we would – collectively – work off those calories for them.

By the end, we were doing push-ups in pools of our own sweat.

Once that was over, we mopped up the sweat and started getting things ready for our ruck march in the morning. As we started taking our stuff down to the CTA formation area on the ground floor, we saw the neighboring company eating pizza in their formation area, no more than 50 feet away from us. It smelled so delicious.

On top of that, one of the other platoons got permission to use their cell phones and were yakking away. (We still haven’t been able to use the pay phones since we got here.)

It was unanimous – basic training sucks.

On top of that, I’m still waiting for a letter from my wife. Thumbs down.