Day 8

11-07-05 8th Day Back In the Army
Sorry everyone, I kinda let my blogs fall to the wayside. I had a good reason though! My little sister Rachel came to visit, yayyy!!! That's us up above. But I'll tell you all about that in a minute. First let me back up to this past Saturday and the gas chamber. Oh yeah, good stuff. Actually, let me back up ALOT further and tell you a story about baby Stacy back in the early 80's. According to my mom when I was really little my dad used to run a gas chamber in Camp Pendleton, CA. He'd come home from there with CS gas still on his clothes and skin and he'd pick me up, not thinking about it, and baby Stacy would freak out and scream. Fast forward to Basic Training in early 2000. I was sooo nervous about going in the gas chamber, not knowing what to expect. I was in the 3rd wave of soldiers to go in so I got to see the first groups come out. It was so scary to see them come running out, grabbing at their eyes, puking, long streams of snot pouring out of their noses; everything on the face that could expell bodily fluid (mucus, tears...) was doing it's job double time! When I went in the Drill SGT's made us take off our masks and give our name, rank, and Social Security #. My eyes burned and teared up, my face felt like it was on fire, but when I got out I was pretty much ok. I wiped away my tears, sniffed my nose a liitle and walked back to the bleachers. I came out ok!!?? Mom said it was because I was predisposed to it at such a young age. Whatever the reason, the same thing happened this time!! A guy next to me never even got his mask sealed all the way and had a very bad time of it. I walked out pretty much the same way I did the first time, I shouldn't have stressed over it so much! At least it's over now.
Rachel came in later that night and I met at her hotel. I was there waiting for her because if I didn't get off post before 9pm I wouldn't be allowed to leave. So when I heard a knock at the door my heart jumped and so did I! I jumped up and ran to the door to look thru the peephole. Rachel is standing in the hallway with her videocamera and we had a goofy hug while she tried to get it on tape. We were screaming and hugging and then...the door shut behind me! I took one look and just laughed cause I realized I had left the darn key in the room!! Of course Rachel got a big kick out of that and she got to tape me getting a new key from the front desk like a goober. The rest of the night was just a fun adventure of clubbing and talking. That's all I'm going to talk about here cause my family reads these blogs and they just know that Rachel and I are perfect angels!!! We got back to our hotel room at like 10:30 in the morning, slept for 2 hours and had to check out. Our only plan for the day was to watch the movie Jarhead but between bad directions from the guy at the front desk, driving around looking for a theater for like 3 hours (no kidding!!), eating lunch, finding a theater that wasn't playing it, and finally finding one that was, we finally got to watch the movie at like 4:20 pm!! It's always an adventure for us! The movie rocked, of course, then we ate some Mexican food and she drove me back to post with the promise of visiting me in Ft. Meade, Maryland in like 2 weeks. I had such a good time and now I miss my sister even more!
Today was actually a pretty good day. A hard but accomplished day. Did PT at 5:45am and actually ran without feeling like I was dying! I read online about some breathing techniques that actually worked so I felt really good about my run. Then we learned about Convoy Operations...essentially, how to be a soldier when traveling dangerous roads when you run into enemy fire or bombs. I had to jump off the side of a truck (a 5 ton for anyone who knows military vehicles) that was like 12 feet up in the air. Then we had to spread out in attack formations and point our rifles while laying on the ground to show that we had all sides covered. It was hot outside but cool. Other than that, not much else to talk about I guess...dinner was ok, they served fish and pasta and I made myself a salad. Oh, and I may have to take my belly button ring out cause my uniform sits right over top of it and it kinda hurts. I haven't decided all the way yet though. Ok, that's definitley everything so good night all!!