Day 7

"How are you doing today? I'm still happy about getting your letter yesterday. I'm at "sick call" right now to pick up a "cold pack" and ibuprofen. Bored and tired. I hate not sleeping a lot...I wonder if I'll get used to that. Did you know that I have stick my "battle buddy" with an IV? And vice versa- I hope mine will do well, it would suck to get poked 10 times.

OH, I keep forgetting to write you and tell you this but it's VERY IMPORTANT. To get a hold of me in case of a medical emergency, you going into labor, death in the family, etc. you need to contact the Red Cross. Find their contact info online and pass it on to anyone who might be helping you out in case of an emergency (like Shari & Joe, your parents, etc.). My unit is the 4th platoon, B-battery, 1-79 FA (FA= field artillery).

It's like 1040 now...we are not allowed to talk or sleep and this is taking forever. I'm hungry, but I hope I get out of here before lunch. Speaking of food, my MRE was pretty good yesterday. The main course was not that great, but the rest was- it was spicy penne pasta, crackers with peanut butter, cranberries, and carrot pound cake plus I ate someone else's cranberries, half of a "Hooah bar" and some wheat bread. Hopefully some of the 360 we owe goes down before I get back- it's the same few jackasses that get us fucked up most of the time. Everyone makes mistakes and that's fine, but when it's repeated and careless it's bullshit. It is really cold in this hospital/clinic. Pretty chilly in the mornings here- probably high 50's and then low 80's at midday. I wish we could wear the PT uniform of our choice instead of the 1sgt's, but whatever. It will probably be better when we're doing more exercise- right now it's only been warming up. We have PT short sleeve (w/ shorts), long sleeve (w/ shorts), and sweats. There is one more but we didn't that one issued to us. Sweet, I'm second up now- they picked up the speed a lot in the last 30 mins (it's 1050 now).

1955 now. I got hooked up at the medic- she gave me cough drops, cold medicine, claritin, a bottle of Tylenol, and a bottle of ibuprofen. I don't really need much right now, but the pain relievers will be great to save for road marches, PT tests, etc and the cough drops will be great later. I just did a little PT practice test because we have our first "diagnostic" PT test on Saturday. I did about 52 push ups in 1:10- because leaving I did 46 in 2:00, so I'm improving, although I've slipped from not working out lately except for getting smoked. Although I'm not sure how effective that is all of the time- the cadence they use is too fast and just throws you off, so you're just trying to catch up instead of doing good exercise- maybe I just need to work harder and try to catch up. I'm worried about doing well on the run- I haven't run in like a month since I left and that was already my weakest event. Plus I did really well on it on my PT test for OCS (14:00 or something). Hey, you know what would be really cool of you? If you could send me information about the outside world- even send some news clips or something. For example I heard the investment bailout bill did not pass in Congress and caused the Dow to drop like 750 points that day. What's going on with that and the election? I'm going to go to bed now. Not sure what we're doing tomorrow, but we have our gear outside ready to go. I love and miss you. Today was nice and easy, our fill-in DS is cool, got a nice break from yelling at sick call, plus more time to eat breakfast and lunch although the afternoon was a lame presentation on not drinking or doing drugs."