?

I have been gone a long time now. Not really that long, but two weeks is long enough. It is just the right amount of time to be gone to start saying I have been gone a while. Anyway, I am back at work now. Is it a bad thing that when a 911 call comes in in the middle of the night, I know whether it will be a medical call or a police call? Or worse yet, is it a bad thing I know if we actually need to go with the ambulance to a call? I am tired, therefore this entry will not be too exciting. It is 4:16am and there is so much more to do. I balanced the checkbook, printed off Army papers for a travel voucher, answered numerous calls, read KT's blog and read written directives. I still have to send her a cereal list. Anyway, I will log off and type more later when I am not so tired. Oh yah, and I paid bills.

ETS

I am at work right now, which means I have time to surf and check on things I don’t really need to check on. So, tonight I went to read the digital version of my Army file online. Low and behold, it told me I have exactly 365 days until my Expiration of Time of Service, otherwise known as an ETS. That’s crazy I can technically leave the Army on 09/03/09. Of course, I will re-enlist, I enjoy the Army too much not to, plus I will not reap all of the benefits I have received thus far. What is crazy to me, is that I can remember back when I was in the Guard, Soren Schmidt laughed when I told him my ETS was in 2009, and that was in 2003. Back then, I thought that was forever. Back then, I was a Specialist, along with Soren Schmidt, Keith Falkner, Ed Brock and Chris Myer. Back then, I had aspirations to be a commissioned officer through the state OCS program by 2004. By 2009, I was hoping to be an armor Captain in charge of one of the 635th’s tank companies.

Now, it is 2009 and I am a Staff Sergeant in a Strategic Intelligence Group, looking to obtain a Warrant Officer commission through a federal OCS program. I am no longer in combat arms, no longer on the tanks and no longer in a traditional Army line unit.
I am now in a non-traditional, strategic intelligence combat support unit. We produce intelligence for plain-clothed civilians. We regularly read “spy” (for lack of a better term) reports, decipher satellite images and write reports and give briefings; work that is vastly different from driving, loading, gunning and commanding tanks.

Do I regret any of this? Not at all, I have been very busy since 2003, and have, for the most part, maintained an upward career trek. There was some time as SGT that I floundered and stagnated, but that was during my transfer and subsequent training in a 2nd MOS. I can only hope now, that I will have the time, energy and motivation to put in a packet for WOCS, and get my bar. Or, if I get deployed again, I will go overseas choosing to do the job I signed up for, not one I was thrust into, like when I was a tanker turned infantryman.