Week #16 - Christmas in Kuwait

by Mike


It was a very busy week. After what seemed like a nice break last weekend, doing laundry on Sunday, the Commodore away on travel for a couple days, Monday and Tuesday felt like a marathon. And then I ran a marathon. Well, almost...

Monday and Tuesday felt like a marathon because I was, and still am, standing 6 hours of watch every day, which is more like 7 hours when you include the 20-30 minute 'turnover' at the start and the end of each shift. At the beginning of the week I was standing the afternoon watch from 1300-1900. So my days went like this: get up, shower and go eat (a healthy) breakfast and be in the conference room by 0745 for Officers' Call. Three days a week that is following by our Ops-Intel brief which goes as long as an hour. That left the rest of the morning to go over daily "due" items with my Assistant Admin Officer so he could take that back to Admin Dept on the other side of the camp and manage things. I would spend the rest of the morning answering to the higher ups and acting as the "eyes and ears" of Admin over in JOC, the Operations side of the house.

Since I had to be back in the JOC for watch turnover at 1230, that didn't leave me much time to get things done in the morning. On a couple occasions I didn't even have time for lunch, or if I did it was only enough time to go get takeout and eat on watch. Not a habit I want to endorse, so I wasn't real happy about this. At least in my watch section there was two qualified Watch Officers, and myself. So we could rotate who "sat in the chair" and who could study, do department work, etc. My guys would typically bring correspondence to me all afternoon. Multi-tasking at its finest!

After watch I would go back over to the Dining Facility (DFAC), grab a more leisurely chow, then back to the JOC to finish up work. I somehow became in charge of all travel. My department arranged commercial travel through Defense Travel System, not uncommon for Admin. But we, and I would say I, also became responsible for military airlift. This is not normally something that Admin takes care of, its an Operations thing. But since I was already spending so much time in the Ops Center they gave it to me. A lot of times we'd work both commercial and military airs options at the same time, not only as a back-up, but also to save the government, or at least our command, TAD money. Not hard to see why this can turn into a full time job just by itself. Hence the reason I had to work more after watch every night.


Early in the week I was also working Public Affairs stuff, for obvious reasons. But we have a collateral duty PAO and the Coast Guard brought a full-time guy. He left last weekend, but not before I got some good photos from him, and all the press releases and stories he'd done. That gave us a jump start on our own deployment press release. Eventually I handed this back off to our PAO. Mostly because...

I also picked up the Protocol job, which is somewhat expected for the Admin Officer. I obviously can't go into details, but we'll have some distinguished visitors (DVs) coming through periodically so we had this program going. Basically involves understanding who has a role in these visits, putting down on paper (a '5050 NOTICE'), and conducting dry runs to ensure things go smoothly when they are onboard.

With all this work its difficult to understand why I got sick last Tuesday. Not real sick, but sick enough to go see our Doc and get some meds. They gave me a cold pack with Sudafed, Tylenol, and Ibuprofen. I think it's helping ward off a more serious cold. A bunch of people have come down with the flu and they have actually been quarantined in two of the PCBs. If everyone came down with the flu we'd be in trouble.

Of course this week was Christmas. I suppose I could have taken some pictures, but it was the standard "try to make it look like home" decorations. The DFAC went all out with Christmas meal, Christmas tree, etc. I think by this time I was on the morning watch.

Also on Christmas I got a bit of a surprise, or you could even call it a Christmas present. As a result of a goal-setting session I had with the Commodore earlier in the day, I was selected be in charge of one of our two task units. Again, I can't really say what that means, but it does mean I'm working directly for the Commodore. And I'm no longer the Admin Officer. I'm actually pretty proud to say that I prepared my assistant, who is a lot more junior and a Coast Guard officer, to take over this role, a 'seemless transition' if you will.

So now I'm focused more operationally. I'm still standing watch, but as of today I'm on my own. We had a 'murder board' Friday night to get us ready for our final qualification boards with the Commodore, and I'm studying like mad to get fully qualified in the next couple weeks. I'm also being asked to provide briefs on certain missions related to what I'll be doing. Plus I arranged for one of the Army units to come give us a brief on what they do here.

Back to my marathon statement at the beginning, I got suckered into this Reindeer Run team event. MWR likes to put together these runs every couple weeks. This one was a team event with twelve to a team. We were each supposed to run 18 miles, and the team with the lowest time wins. The Port Security Unit (PSU) team asked me to run because they saw me running on the treadmill a lot. I hadn't even run more than 3 miles at once prior to being asked. So I worked my way up to 4 and then 5 miles at a time. Then for the event you basically had to run 6 miles the night of the 23rd, then 6 miles the morning of the 24th and a final 6 miles that night.

Well, after the first 6 miles I come to find out its allegedly 'easier' or at least faster to do it on the elliptical. So I elected to do the middle 6 miles on this machine that simulates cross country skiing. Then I did the final 6 miles running again. It was rough but I made it. Then went straight to bed. Only problem was the next morning I couldn't walk! The elliptical machine really does a number on your calves, especially if you're not ready. But we took third overall. The Army team won, they did the whole thing on the elliptical. They must have trained for it. I don't see anyone else limping around (yes, I'm still limping)!

Last night we watched "12 O'Clock High" in the wardroom as part of our professional development. I came in a little late because I was at another training session, this one for the enlisted Expeditionary Warfare pin. The officers are supposed to the 'common core' or basics of this qual for the JOC watch officer qual. After the movie we discussed some of the leadership qualities displayed in the film. Good discussion for us officers with all the challenges we face out here.

So today its laundry day again. And blog post day. And I'm going to try and put some photos in here. At least now I've got some good ones!