Week #29 - March Madness

Struggling for a name to capture this week's craziness, it didn't take long to arrive at the ideal title.


Last weekend Katie helped me put together my first (or maybe second?) ever NCAA basketball bracket. I admit, it's probably a little bit of an unfair advantage having my ESPN researcher wife on my side for even the most innocent sports competition. But since she didn't pick Syracuse to win even one game (and they've made it at least as far as the Sweet 16), I'm only in second place. Depending on how much each round is worth, I can still pull it off.

But this week was total madness at work. For some reason I found out my relief was coming on two days notice. So I had to get ready for my turnover. In the meantime, I moved rooms and realized it was going to be crowded in the new room if he was to stay there. Space is at a real premium, so we put him on the ship with our boat detachment for a few days. This way he gets to see their operations every morning and evening.

Busy day at the boat landing

But the week just kept getting crazier. A bunch of small things but it just had me and the boat OIC just shaking our heads. If I didn't know any better I'd say it was just a power struggle back at the beach, mixed with a bunch of micro-management. Small stuff like when should the guys be wearing their helmets on the boats? When can they use their call signs? Should they have call signs at all? Then there just seemed to be total lack of communication in some areas. I hate to call out senior officers, but not answering the mail isn't exactly a good way to "take care of your people" that are at the tip of the spear.

So the latter part of the week was a little stressful. But we had some fun trying to figure out the decision making process and leadership issues behind all this. And my relief is here and he didn't have a bad thing to say about us; he was basically laughing it all off, even telling us about some other personality issues back in Kuwait. So hopefully its all just water under the bridge.

USS Paul Hamilton

On a happier note, I got to go over and partake in a steel beach picnic on the U.S. Destroyer that was up here for a couple weeks. They invited personnel from the other, smaller, ships to come over as well as the OPLATs. A small group of us headed over to the PAUL HAMILTON and enjoyed some different food.

Steel Beach Picnic and Concert

Yesterday we got another gun shoot, and this time I got to shoot from the boat. I should say I ordered the guys to let me shoot. These gun shoots have been the culmination of lots of planning and convincing. Any time you do something new you have to prove to everyone it will be conducted safely. In our case, we had to prove it to everyone in two separate chains of command.

This post is a little shorter than normal and with less photos because I've been busy this Sunday - didn't even get to do laundry - and because I've got to get up early. But I will end with my revised coin design. Can't even remember if I ever posted the original one. Oh well, here it is. One more week until I move off KAAOT!