Up Even Earlier!

Today I got up earlier than usual.  Not by much.  I got up at 3:48 a.m. instead of 4:07 a.m.  But in the sad world of Zero-Dark-30, every minute counts. Today I was on the duty desk for 4:30 to 6:30 a.m.  Some of my classmates were jealous.  Being on duty on weekday mornings means you are not doing fitness training. 

So while they did pushups, situps, pullups and the other morning exercises, I was checking my email and checking ID cards of everyone who went in and out of the building. 

I am way behind on email so the time was kind of nice.  We are not allowed to have any personal items on the desk, especially personal electronics, but I can check email on the Army computer. 

At 6:30 a.m. I was released to go to class--which starts at 7:55 a.m.  I went straight to the chow hall.  Although the food here is not as lavish as the food in Iraq, breakfast is by far the best meal.  Every morning the cook who makes the eggs, Anna, sees me and makes an omelet with ham, cheese and green peppers.  Depending on the day, I  get either a biscuit and bacon or a biscuit and sausage gravy.  Sometimes home fries, sometimes grits, French toast when they have it, juice and coffee.

And for the environmental folks who read this, like my wife, we eat with metal silverware on plates and trays with cups and mugs.  Everything gets washed, not tossed.

Weakly Working the Weekly Publishing Schedule

In 1979 I was a staff writer for the Wiesbaden Post newspaper, published by the Wiesbaden Military Community in Germany.  In that era every base and fort had a weekly newspaper which went to press on Wednesday and had a publication date of Thursday.

The following two years I worked for the Elizabethtown (Pa.) Chronicle also a weekly newspaper that was published every Thursday.

Today, the Post, the Chronicle and many other weekly newspapers have disappeared, replaced by web sites.  As late as the military is to all electronic and social media, base newspapers are disappearing faster than ice cubes in Algeria, but we are writing our news leads holding to the weekly publication calendar.  As a teaching aid, I can understand it because it is a small puzzle to solve, and some of us may go to the half-dozen posts that still publish a weekly.

But it is strange to have this weekly calendar back in my head so long after I used it in as part of my daily work.