First off, Merry Christmas to anyone who is reading this. 

Next, I would like to relay that the Child's Play Charity has a current tally of $885,000 this year.  Apparently, this is before they go in and tally the nonmonetary gifts donated from corporations and such.  There is also video available from the charity dinner that they held this year.  I would like to warn you that the artists for Penny Arcade (the two guys that do the live auction) look NOTHING like their drawn counterparts.  They do this charity every year, so if you missed out, just put a little circle on your calendar 11 months from now (yes, it starts in November).

Lastly, I have been neglecting my blogs for the past week or so (I'm too lazy to go and see when the last entry was), so you were supposed to get a bunch of funny pictures dished out over time.  Instead, open wide, because here comes the fire hose (click on the photo to see a bigger version):

Black 6, out.

Friday night is something that I would call both a "learning experience" and a "painful experience".  There's not really much that I can say about it, but it was a long 12 hours, of which the last 5 were definitely on the "not fun" list.  If you watch the Simpsons, you may remember an episode called "Homer the Great", in which Homer becomes a member of the "Stonecutters", a send up of a few fraternal organizations.  One scene in particular was during Homer's trials, in which he was paddled during "Crossing the Desert", "the unblinking eye", and "the Paddling of the Swollen Ass...With Paddles".  It was very funny when I watched it, and seemed very quick.  All I can say is that the real thing is not quick or funny, and although the name may draw a laugh, the act will not.

In the end, it's over, and I'll never have to do it again.

Black 6, ouch.

First off, let me say that "Stranger than Fiction" is an excellent movie that everyone should drag someone else to see.  Just makes me want to quit my job and actually live life.

Second, as the holidays draw near, you may have trouble knowing what to get someone.  Sometimes if you listen closely, you'll find out exactly what they want.  However, if you don't pay attention, you may be a little off:

I cant wait until next week. First off (this is a nested "first off"), I will be done with class, which is not that bad, but I really can't put any real effort toward it.  So all that it becomes is that "other" annoying thing that I have to do at the end of a day.  What's worse, is that, thanks to work, anything for class comes after I'm drained by the day, and at the point where I don't want to do anything else.  I've decided to take the next two semesters off from my Masters degree, and I will restart things when we deploy.  Not only will this give me time to do a little living, but I will get to keep an extra $300 a month.

My Christmas shopping is almost complete.  Thank God for the internet.  Once that's done I can get back to buying stuff that I need.  That was my pact with myself:  I can buy myself something only after my other shopping was done, and damn it, I really want to buy a new pair of running shoes.

Black 6, out.

First off (and this is the only one this time), it's Workout Wednesday again, so I'll knock this out first.

The first exercise is called the hamstring bridge, and works the back of the thigh.  You get to the start position by laying flat on your back with your hands on your stomach.  From there take one leg, and place the heel that foot next to the knee of the other leg.  This is the base leg:

Take the other leg, and pick it up off the ground.  Lastly, thrust your hips toward the ceiling.  You are now in the starting position.  From here, lower your body down slowly until your butt almost touches the floor.  At that point, you quickly thrust your hips back up and pause and squeeze at the top.

If you find this too hard, you can start with your butt on the floor, and thrust toward the ceiling, squeeze, and then return to the floor at a moderate speed.

The second exercise I don't have a name for.  You start by lying on the floor with your hands under your hips/butt, and pulling your knees into your chest (start position):

From there, extend your feet out until they are 6 inches off of the ground:

Then raise them until they are perpendicular to the ground:

Then, if you feel really up to it, lift your hips off the ground, as though you were trying to put your footprints on the ceiling:

(This is a bit exaggerated.  You should only really raise your hips a few inches off of the ground, but is impossible for me to do it that way for the camera like that and hold it.)

From there, reverse the movements, bring your feet down to 6 inches off of the ground, and then pulling your knees into your chest.  Each movement is a distinct movement, and you should pause for a second or two after each (with the exception of where you raise your hips off of the ground).

As the holidays approach, we should all remember:

To close, the holidays getting closer, there is still plenty of time for you to participate in the Child's Play Charity.  If you were holding out until the last minute, you shouldn't.

Black 6, out.

Nothing exciting has really happened since Wednesday.  It's actually been pretty boring.  Tigger seems to be doing ok.  I expect to transition him back to an outdoor cat in a few weeks.  I think he's getting fat, but I am sure that he is lazy.  The thing is, I don't really know what he does outside.  Maybe he just goes off and acts lazy, but outside.

I'm looking at buying these two shirts:

Speaking of shopping.  I'm trying to finish off my Christmas shopping as soon as possible.  Most of it is being done online, so that helps in getting stuff there on time.  The hardest part is figuring out what to get people.  On that note, friends and family that have no idea what I want should check out my amazon.com wish list and my Think Geek wish list.  For the amazon.com one just sort by price (low to high), and do a compact view, grab the cheapest thing or two (or four ).

Speaking of wish lists, that's what the Child's Play works on.  On the page there's a map of all the Children's Hospitals that are currently supported.  Clicking on a game controller for one takes you to the Amazon.com wish list for that specific hospital.  The toys are then shipped directly to them.  This is important because there are a lot of restrictions on what the kid can get.  For example, used stuff is out of the question, because germs are a a bug issue since many of the children have weakened immune systems.  The same goes for why you'll see no stuffed items on the wish lists.

Lastly, I suggest that everyone check out "An Inconvenient Truth".  Al Gore really presents a lot of information in a way that people can understand.  He also points out where a lot of the misinformation about the environment is actually coming from.

Black 6, out

First off, today I was part of a wings exchange jump, so I have earned my Italian Jump-wings.  It was just like any other jump.  The only requirement was that we had an Italian Assistant Jumpmaster on the plane.  I did not land in a corn field this time, so I am thankful for that.  However, my landing was hard, because I apparently come down like a sack of bricks.  Fortunately, the drop zone here is somewhat soft.

A week ago, you all probably pigged out until you passed out, thanks to Thanksgiving.  You probably also didn't sit up. unless it was to ingest more food.  While talking with a friend of mine via Myspace, he asked if I could help him develop a workout program.  He also stated that he did not have access to gym equipment, like he used to.  This was interesting to me, because it has been a while since I was unable to get to some sort of weight equipment for free.  Combine this with the fact that I've considered becoming a personal trainer, and I have a small hole to fill.  BEcause of this, I've going to try to produce entries for "Workout Wednesdays" which is basically a way to show exercises that can be done without the use of a large gym.  for the most part, the exercises won't be designed to build muscle, due to the lack of heavy weights, but will allow for general fitness, endurance, and toning.

The first exercise is the pushup.  It is a relatively simple exercise, with a number of small nuances to it.  The first is hand spacing.  There are "regular" pushups, close grip pushups, and wide grip pushups.  Wide grip targets the outer chest, while close grip works the inner chest and triceps more.  For today, I will be looking at the "regular" pushup.  The first thing to do is find that perfect position where your hands feel comfortable.  I found it by starting off lying on the floor and placing my hands close to my chest, which also put the tips of my thumbs near my nipples (stop giggling).
 
From there I pushed up into the starting position and adjusted my hands outward until they felt comfortable.

To complete a repetition, while keeping your body generally straight (don't sag in the middle), bend your arms at the elbow until your upper arms are parallel to the ground:

The push back up to the start position.  The position of your elbows determines which muscles are stressed more.  If they at 90 degrees out from the body (in line with the should blades), you stress your chest more, similar to a wide-grip position.  If they are against your body, you work the triceps more.  Personally, I let them be at 45 degrees out.

To figure out how many you can do, I recommend starting out with a low number like 10-15.  If you are fine with that, do a second set of 5-10.  The next time you workout, do 5 more than what you did last time.  When you hit your plateau, that number will become your first set, and your second and third sets can be 10 or so.  When you are able to do 50 in a row, I recommend elevating your feet one foot off the ground, and performing the whole process over again.  When you are able to do 50 there, increase the elevation, but do not go higher than 45 degrees off the ground, as you start to work the shoulders instead (unless that's what you want).

The second exercise that I will show is the Russian Lunge.  It targets the quadriceps (front of the thigh).  Starting from a standing position, bend at the waist, and pick one foot of of the ground slightly:

From this position, bend your base leg until your chest is on your thigh.  DO NOT rock at the waist.  Your upper body should remain generally parallel to the ground.

From here push back up to the start position.  I recommend 9 reps with one leg, and then switch.

Black 6, out.

Again, before I start, I would like to draw attention to the Child's Play Charity.  And now, on with the story.

Like I mentioned the other day, some friends of mine will be leaving Italy soon.  They will be moving to California.  However, they have a cat that will not be going with them, due to the fact that cats are tasty to coyotes.  Since the cat has taken a liking to me, I agreed to have him live with me.  As you can see, it's all his fault for liking me.  He's an outdoor cat, but I don't like the idea of having to drive 15 minutes to recover him when he gets out, so I know I'm going to have to reacquaint him to indoors, and them let him rediscover a new outdoors.

On Saturday, I picked him up, and he spent his first time in a cat transport thingy.  He meowed the whole way home, which is about 15 minutes of heartbreaking meowing.  I get him home, and I leave him in the car carrier while I prep things.  Kitty litter: check.  Food and water: check.  Nothing that can be easily knocked over: check.  Alright, it was time to let him out.  I put the food dish a foot in front of the cat carrier and open the door. 

He stuck his head out and looked around.  Then he came out slowly, and started walking toward the guest bedroom, and walked right under the bed.  From what I read, the whole "hiding" thing is pretty much normal.  Since he's chosen that room as his "haven" I decided to move the food and litter in there.  THat was pretty much everything that happened for the next 5 hours.  I would check on him every 10 minutes, and he would be in the same spot.  At some point, I know that he ate.

During one o my checks, I see that he is not under the bed.  I look around the room, and he's nowhere in sight.  I know he hasn't come to the living room, and all of the other doors are closed.  I check a couple of places, but to no avail, but I know that he can't get out.  As some point, I decide to check behind a very large dresser in the guest room.  I guess that he decided to explore a bit.  However, there wasn't much room back there, so he walked in, and got himself stuck.  When I looked back there with my flashlight, all he could do was look over his shoulder at me. 

I push the dresser away from the wall, and I see him slide down, meaning that his from paws must have been unable to touch the ground at the time.  Then I push it a little more, which gives him room to turn around.  He promptly turns and runs...right into a duffel bag that I had on the floor near the door.  Going around this, he goes to the living room, and sits behind the curtains.  He stayed there a while, before going back to under the bed. 

This would go on until I started to go to bed.  At some point, while I was lying down, he decided to come into my room and explore.  And then he decided to walk on me, something he would do much of the night while I tried to sleep.  The rest of the time, he would just curl up near/on my legs.

The next morning, I woke up, and he was nowhere in sight.  I check the guest room, and he wasn't there.  I checked the living room, and he wasn't there, either.  I check my bedroom, and didn't see him, so now I think I'm losing my mind.  I decide to systematically search the apartment (the brain doesn't automatically keep track of where you have looked for an item), and eventually find him in a new hiding place: the area behind my dresser, but near the window (not a tight squeeze).  He would spend the rest of the day hiding in various places, but mostly under my bed.  He didn't even come out when my friend and his children came over.

Later that day, I decided that I would need to play hardball, so I went to the store and purchased some Friskies cat treats.  The person that said that you cannot buy love was a liar.  With cat treats in hand, I decided that the first thing to do was train him to come when I called.  Armed with a few treats, I used one to coax him out from under the bed.  Then I backed up and called him to me, and gave him a treat when he came.  Then I did it from 10 feet away, and now I can do it from 2 rooms away.  I have also trained him to know that it is ok for him to come onto the couch, which is where he has been lying for the past hour.

Also, he finally used the litterbox, so I can put that thought to rest.

And now, without further ado, Tigger:
 

Black 6, out.

First off, Happy Thanksgiving.  And for my non-US readers, Happy Thursday.  Today was my largest cooking exercise to date, and it was a lot of fun.  Actually, it was more of a team effort between myself, my lifting buddy, and his 15-year old son (Go MEN!).  This would also be big since he and his family PCS to California in a few days, so I'll be losing the closest thing to a family that I have out here.

First off, I had to go through my ever-expanding cookbooks and figure out what I wanted to cook:

As you can see, there was quite a bit to sort through.  You assume that there are the easy items that HAVE TO be there:  turkey, ham, potatoes, stuffing.  From there, I had to figure that we needed a desert, some vegetables, and random other stuff.  Second, because we would be doing this at their house, and they had already shipped everything off, I spend two days propositioning all of my pots, pans and cooking items.  Lastly, we did our shopping on Wednesday.

I didn't get pictures of the process, since I was cooking, but I did get the end results.  The cooking time was approximately 4 hours of work (which, I honestly believe could have been shortened, but only with a second stove top).  The menu (aside from the ham and turkey) was:

Mashed Potatoes
Fried Cabbage
Moist Bread stuffing
Candied Sweet Potatoes
Brown Sugar Glazed carrots
Glazed Onions
Pineapple Chutney
Cranberry Sauce (from scratch)
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Duff (type of cake) and butter sauce
Triple ginger cupcakes

Mike took care of peeling and cutting up the potatoes and preheating the oven before I arrived.  As soon as I walked in the door, I wa straight at the kitchen.  I could throw you the details of cooking by it's not a very exciting story.  Due to limitation on pots and skillets, and our need to sometimes need to use all 3 at one time, there was a lot of in-process washing that was being taken care of. 

Since the son didn't have a lot of cooking experience, most of his tasks were either item-prep related or cleaning related.  He actually did a good job.  However, early on, while opening a can of crushed pineapples.  Right after that happened, I needed to run and grab some items, so I tasked him with prepping the peeling and chopping the sweet potatoes.  When I came back, neither was done:

Me: Did B. peel the sweet potatoes?
Mike: No.
Me: I told him to.
Lori (The wife/mom): Oh, I didn't want him working with the knives.
Me:  (Baffled) What?  You didn't...huh?

Now, granted, the knife set that I use in the kitchen is the Miracle Blade III set, which, for what it costs, does an awesome job of chopping stuff into smaller stuff.  They're sharp as all hell, too.  You know them from that infomercial where the guy cuts on the head of a hammer, and then shows that they are still able to cut a tomato nicely.  Yeah, they work, and they can cut through a cadet locker, also.  I've cut myself at least two or three time thanks to them, and when they cut, oh boy does it bleed.  However, it only seems to happen when I was cutting something really small and/or lost focus.

Me:  But we have a peeler.
(Later on) -
Me: She didn't want you using the knives?
B.: Yeah, because I cut my finger earlier.
Me: But you cut it on the can of pineapples.  (Yelling to Lori in the other room) Lori, he cut it on the can of pineapples.  I mean, you should have banned him from the can-opener.  Wait, the can was one of those easy open pull tabs ones.  Maybe you should ban him from those.

Mike did the fried cabbage (one of his specialties), stuffing, and the cranberry sauce (something neither of us had made before), I tackled the carrots and the onions, and pretty much monitored stuff on the stove since what I was cooking required me to be there much of the time to make various glazes and sauces.  The son took care of the chutney and did some heavy assistance with the cupcakes.  Mike was also on the oven overseeing the turkey. 

In the end, I thing that if I had a less demanding job, I could have figured a way to load everything into a table.  In my head, things would run somewhat like a kitchen. With one oven, I would have wanted to take a closer look at the oven temperatures necessary so that I could put more than one thing in at a time.  Actually, I was able to do that today, but it was more by luck than skill.

When things were just about done, I walked out and found Lori asleep in a chair, the daughter (9) was loafing in another chair.  I couldn't get my camera in time to catch a picture of the lazy women.  I did get a few pictures of the spread:
 

Afterwards, we all sat and ate.  The oldest son, who weighes in at around 155 lbs., ate 4 plates.  I don't really know where he put it all.  Hopefully, he'll pay for it later when he tries to pass a small elephant.  I was stuffed after 2. Meanwhile the kids, and the neighbor's kids sat and watched Ice Age: The Meltdown.  I fell asleep, suffering from The Itis.  I passed out around the point where Queen Latifa's character figures out that she's a mammoth.  Meanwhile, some of the children thought it would be fun to put a sock up my nose.  I did wake up to watch Accepted, though.

All in all, it was a good time, and my first Thanksgiving where I cooked, and it went very well.  Everything turned out great.

Lastly, now that Thanksgiving is over, I would like to point to this year's Child's Play Drive.  Basically, it was started so that gamers giving back by donating items to numerous Children's Hospitals around the globe.  The donating is done through Amazon.com wishlists (there's one for each hospital).  Last year broke $605,000 in donations, and this year, 8 additional hospitals have been added.  I have also added a new banner and link to the top right of the page.

Black 6, out.

Does anyone still read this, because apparently, regular updates have become a thing of the past.

On Friday, I was the Staff Duty Officer (SDO).  If you remember the last time that I wrote about this, it was a pretty long night.  Now, I had duty again once after that, but it was uneventful.  I wouldn’t be so lucky this night, since it was the Friday night of a 4-day weekend.

The way Staff Duty Officer used to work was that the officer only had to be “on call”, which meant that they did not have to sit at the Brigade all night.  Instead, they could go back home, if they lived close enough, and only had to come in if they were called, due to a serious situation (which rarely happened at a level in which they were needed).  Because they didn’t have to be there, the officer was not given the next day off like the NCO and 2 soldiers that had to sit at the desk all night.

The way that it works now is that the officer has to stay at Brigade the entire time.  However, the officer is authorized to sleep, since they will not have the next day off.  It is for this reason that I know own an inflatable mattress.  This plan works in a perfect world.  However, the soldiers refuse to cooperate, instead causing trouble during prime sleeping hours.  Add to this the fact that at 0500, the SDO must send off an email to most of the upper staff, and you can almost kiss good sleep goodbye.

Now the night was pretty uneventful.  The first thing that happened was Courtesy Patrol finding a soldier passed out in front of a strip club (I assume it’s a strip club, since it is called “Estasia”).  Courtesy Patrol is a duty in which some soldiers are basically tasked to drive around to all the clubs, bars and strip clubs, and pick up joes that are too drunk, or didn’t have a plan to get back to post.  The other event was a Red Cross message.  0500 rolls around, and I send off my morning report, only to receive an email and a call from the Brigade Command Sergeant Major (CSM) asking about two other significant events that he had gotten notification of from SETAF (our parent unit). 

Here’s the problem.  Normally, for serious events, information travels from the company, to the battalion Staff Duty.  From there, the staff duty notifies their commander, and brigade staff duty.  From there, brigade staff duty notifies the brigade commander, but normally I will ensure that the battalion was able to notify their commander, first.  This allows each lower commander to know about the situation before their boss does, preventing them from being blindsided.
In this case, information went to the Commanding General, and the Brigade CSM.  From there, he told me.  Then I had to tell the battalions, all while trying to gather more information.  Then the battalion told their commander, while trying to find out info.  It’s pretty much the EXACT OPPOSITE way that you want information to flow.

Event one: Domestic violence.  A soldier and his wife go out drinking and return home.  There, they have a verbal argument that allegedly became physical.  She calls the MP’s and says that he choked and shook her.  He has no recollection of the event.  The MP’s take him away, and give him a breathalyzer test, in which he has a Blood Alcohol Content of .150 (I honestly have no idea how people function at that point).  He may end up being charged with assault.  In this case, sine the MP’s were called, they simply assumed that we had been called, and didn’t tell us.  Although the incident occurred at 0330, the battalion was not told until 0525.

Event two.  Three soldiers are in Verona, drinking (nothing new, here), and are later at the train station.  Supposedly they asked the police for directions.  The police apparently decide to arrest them for public drunkenness, but not before supposedly beating them, and one soldier “fell down some stairs,” putting him in the hospital.  Supposedly, the company that the soldiers belonged to did not know about the hospitalization of the soldier, and simply thought that they had to send someone to pick up the three soldiers.  For that reason, the company did not notify the battalion.  However, SETAF was told at some point, and apparently received more information.

Anyway, once duty was over, i was glad to be done.  Eventually, I went home and passed out for a few hours before trying out a new recipe and watching Cars (which is very funny).

Black 6, out.

Before I get to today's story, I would like to say that Step Up is awesome.  Also, it's one of VERY few movies where I walked out and thought that I just HAD TO get my hands on the soundtrack.

Yesterday, an email went out from my NCOIC telling the section what the packing list would be if we wanted to participate in the next day's road march.  Apparently, the Brigade is doing the EIB prerequisites.  Glad I was on top of this, since I was told that it started in November.  So basically, late in the day, I'm told that there's an optional, 12-mile road march the next day; that we have to be there at 0330, and that those of us going for the EIB must complete it in 3 hours (other personnel have 4 hours), with a rifle.  I mean, it's nuts.  I haven't been doing any real ruck training.  I have no idea where some of the stuff I need is.  I haven't even rested in the previous days to be physically ready.  I should just forget about it.

The next morning, I'm up at 0300, and I am definitely thinking about rolling over and waking up later, since I went to bed at 2300.  The previous night, I pulled my LCE out of a bag of items that I packed 2 years ago, prior to the deployment, thinking that I would never need them again.  I'm a pretty good thinker, so I looked at the facts and made these specific assessments to what I would need to do.  First off, I've never done a road march this long in ACUs.  However, from regular use, I do know that they are hotter than the BDU's, and that they chafe like hell, which is the reason I wear underwear with them, something I hadn't done in uniform since 2001 (aside from airborne jumps).  Therefore, I chose to wear both an Under Armour Heat-Gear t-shirt and Under Armour Boxer briefs. 

Normally, I carry a camelbak, but the issue here is that all my canteens will have to be full, anyway, and the camelbak is simply more weight.  Also, drinking from my 1-quarts will lighten the load slightly over time.  Items are packed so that the heaviest items are closest to my back, placing the ruck's center of mass closer, and preventing it from pulling me back much.  I won't be drinking from the 2 quart on the ruck, so I'll count it toward my needed 35 lbs, and I will only exceed the minimum weight by 2 lbs at the most.  It training, I'll normally carry a heavier ruck than the people I'm with (and since I'm with a lot of non-infantry people, I usually go 10 lbs heavier, before water).  However, when it counts, I cut weight to the minimum.  Better to pass and with the minimum, than to fail trying to be hooah.  I choose to not wear my winter desetr boots because they would be heavier (however, I forgot that I had been wearing my summer ones a lot, and didn't realize that I had pretty much taken the cushion out of the insert though regular use).

I have certain beliefs about road march training.  First off, you need a minimum of 3 miles for your feet to start to toughen.  You need a minimum of 6 miles to get any actual, beneficially physical training out of it.  Then there's what happens after 6 miles (more on that later). 

Alright, when road marching, the first 3 miles are probably the most painful.  During this time, I was waiting for my feet to go numb, or for my brain to shut out the pain that usually happens when you allow your feet to impact the ground with heavy weight.  I swear I thought that time would never come.  I forget when it did, but buy was it welcomed.  For the next 3 miles, you're letting your body get into that groove.  I normally pick up the pace a little, now that my feet aren't bothering me.  Now, once you break 6 miles, there's really no difference between that and 16 miles or so.  For those mile, you only concern yourself with two thing.  First, ensuring that you keep a good pace.  Second, not losing your momentum for any reason.  Just no stopping, otherwise you regress, and have to regain your mentality.  Hell, at one point Reveille played, and i just ignored it.  So did the guys to my sides.  I had made that decision 30 minutes earlier.  I saw some people from the slower march (going where we had already passed) stop.  I felt sorry for them.  And they did it with a ruck on.  Idiots.

Another thing that happens after 6 miles is that you try to do the minimum amount of work possible (technically, this starts after the first step).  I refused to step up on curbs, and took my turns and curves as tight as possible.  It's a little hard, because I had picked up two road march buddies, and we're all thinking the same thing, so you go from walking next to each other, to a straight line, and then return after the curve.  However, there is no talking or planning of who goes where; it just happens.  On the third lap (the route had us walking around the base 4 times), we were all walking and attempting to cut about 6 feet off the walk by stepping up onto a curb and then down n the other side.  It was only a 6 inch drop.  All three of us felt the same thing (as we would discuss moments afterward).  At this point, your feet don't really like you any more.  In fact, they are barely putting up with the fact that you dragged them out here to do this.  The amount of pain that our feet sent to our brain was the equivalent of the message:

"Listen, fucker.  It's bad enough that you're doing this, but you had better cut that crap out.  No drops, no hard steps, no funny stuff.  Or else we're leaving." 

About a mile later, one of the guys that I was with walked up onto a sidewalk.  We tried to warn him.  We also tried to stop him from stepping down on the other side.  He got a reminder message from his feet.

The final part of any mach over 6 miles is that the last 2 miles is a test of will, especially if you are ahead of the necessary pace.  You need to keep your body moving at that faster pace, and not let it relax until you are done.  It's similar to running.  Also, after 6 miles, you don't feel anything physically, as long as you keep electrolytes in your system, so 12 and 16 miles is simply a matter of time difference.

I finished in 2 hours and some amount of minutes (around 35 or so).  Once you stop, you get to feel pain again.  I placed my weight on any spots that I felt a bilster starting to form (2) to prevent the liquid from pooling, forcing it to be reabsorbed, and preventing a blister.  I unpacked my ruck for the packing list inspection, and then had to feel the pain of putting it back on to take it to my car.  My toe nails were digging into my foot, the bottoms of my feet hurt from lack of good padding, and my Ranger Tab had fallen off around mile 9.  I initially saw it sliding down my uniform around mile 7 (it was hanging on below my unit patch at the time), but put it back in place.  Apparently, these velcro Ranger Tabs aren't as tough as the old school sew-ons. 

When I got home, I left my ruck in the car.  I was too lazy to even carry the car keys up with me, opting to leave them under my patrol cap, which I also left in the car.  I walked up the 3 flights of stairs, sat at my table, and relaxed, took off the boots, and ripped off the ends of the toenails that were bothering me.  Poured down some Endurox R4, and began preparations for a long day of sitting down.

Black 6, out.