Increasing rate of work craziness

The next couple weeks are going to be really crazy at work. Right now I'm in IRT (Individual Replacement Training), which basically is a certification that you're trained enough to deploy. I'll finish on August 12.

August 6 is a training holiday, which I plan to use to take the Korean DLPT. Hopefully I can do well enough to get Foreign Language Proficiency Pay, but I'm ont too optomistic about it. I just want to get it out of the way so I can at least get something on my ORB and move on.

On the 16th I start Driver's Training Academy so I can at least cognitively know how to drive a truck. Not that it would ever really happen -- it's just one of those things that I have to do.

If it weren't for the hectic pace of things around the company, I'd really look forward to it -- after all, I AM a Transportation officer. I'd be a shame to work with truck drivers for years and never understand what they do; it's just that's it's not a good time.

When I finish with that, it's just in time for the company's "RFI," which is kind of like Christmas in terms of all the new toys we'll get. Included are things like uniforms with the new camouflage, body armor with side plates, and Leatherman/Gerber-style multitools.

Once that is done in early September, there's the Labor Day weekend, and then I have to do a Combat LifeSaver (CLS) class for three days. By the time that's over, the company is scheduled to go to the National Training Center (NTC) in California.

So between now and the middle of October, I have about three days where I don't have some major thing taking up the majority of my day.

In addition to all this, though, are my duties as a Hazardous Materials Certifier. As we pack up our stuff to go to California and then overseas, we have to separate incompatible things so that there's no risk of Kablooie en route. That's no small task, even if my days weren't already filled with "check-the-box" garbage.

But I guess that's what Army officers do.