New SERE dates....and more of Chaz

It didn't take long for Chaz to be my favorite thing to blog about....he's getting more personality every single day that we have him.

To justify posting more videos of him playing, I thought I'd write that my SERE school start date has changed to 7 September. That means I get a 4 day pass this weekend...which is awesome. Now to the interesting stuff....him playing with his favorite toys: 2 worn out old socks.

Chaz starts to play

He's getting a lot more comfortable around us, which makes him even more fun to have. Here's a video of him playing with my foot.

And when we were finished....

Chaz!

Meet Chaz...He's the Sheltie puppy we drove down to Florida to pick up today. He's about 16 weeks old and was the pick of the litter by someone else -- but he didn't work out for them. As you can probably tell, he's already a fun guy to have around.

Johnni and I spent the morning and first part of the afternoon bringing him back home, and have spent the time since playing with him and trying to start on housebreaking him. For those who haven't housebroken a puppy, it mostly consists of us playing with him until he finds the right spot on the carpet to pee...then we scare him half to death when we tell him "NO!" and pick him up to take him outside...finally we clean up and start the cycle over again. I guess we'll have to take him out more often. These dogs are supposed to be smart, so hopefully he picks it up pretty quickly.

More of the different

My schedule has been the same, with PT in the morning and 1100 accountability formation. The rest of my day, though, has been spent doing in-processing. This included medical paperwork, getting shots, filing for travel reimbursement, etc. It's actually been a pretty busy week!

Johnni and I have been looking around a bit for a puppy...and we're going to see one this weekend! He lives down in Florida right now (gulf coast, not the part that's been hit with 26" of rain in the last day or week?). He's a little older than we were first looking at, but he sounds like he might be a great fit for us.

Finally, it looks like I'll be leaving the digital world for a few weeks on 31 August. I get to attend SERE-C School starting that Sunday, until 21 September. The Army tries to keep most of the information from SERE away from public knowledge so I don't know that much about it, but the basic premise is that it's a school to train me on how to survive if I go down behind enemy lines. I've heard several people say that unless I like eating bugs, I can expect to go at least 5 days without food. Some also say it's the best Army school they've ever been to. I'm definitely looking forward to getting it finished, but it will be a long time without getting to speak to or see Johnni!

Some pictures from the last week:

Matt cutting his annual pineapple for his birthday last week

Walking in from our carport

As you leave the kitchen you enter our living room, dining room, movie room, and everything else room.

No, this is not a gym locker room...it is our bathroom.

Where all of the hard work gets done.

Our bedroom, looking in from the door

The half-locker room attached to our bedroom

And finally, a picture of my beautiful wife cooking us dinner the other night...

Schedule and more down in Alabama

Hey everyone....Mollie gave me the idea to keep a record of what my schedule is like down here in LA (Lower Alabama). I've been meaning to get this posted all week, but we finally got internet yesterday and I'm getting caught up on a few things. I'll go day by day, for effect.

Monday:
Johnni and I woke up at 3:30am to drive the last 3 hours to Fort Rucker. Why did we wake up at 3:30 am? Well, as it would turn out we are still in Central time zone down here. That's great, except that the whole drive we thought we were changing time zones and would be in Eastern by the end of it. Nope, instead we ended up waking up at 3:30 instead of 4:30. Why 4:30 then? Well, because we thought we were 5 hours from Ft. Rucker...but really we were only 3. I blame Jack (the GPS).

We drove around post looking for where I was supposed to report in. I finally signed in around 11 and went to a few different buildings filling out paperwork. We had an appointment at 3pm to get our housing, and we ended up choosing a 3BR over a 4BR. Pics will come once we get things settled...

After choosing a house I was off for the day, so we grabbed our camping chairs and spent the evening in our empty duplex. Here's a pic of our new pet:


This is a picture of a female Banana Spider taken from Dave's (friend) iPhone. The spider is about the size of the palm of my hand. It's the biggest spider I've ever seen, and is still hanging around to keep us company. One of the benefits of living on post is the free pest control....I think it's pretty obvious that this job went to the lowest bidder...

Tuesday:
I had a swim test at 0700. I got to the gym and put on the required flight suit, vest, helmet, and boots and proceeded down to the pool deck. The 8 of us there were then informed that there was too much chlorine in the pool and we couldn't do the test that morning. We all changed out of the gear and I went home until my 1100 formation. The 1100 formation was short (as in, I was dismissed at 1110) which gave me some time to eat lunch before taking the actual swim test at 1300. I passed and was told my "Dunker" school dates would be after JOPD which I can only guess stands for Junior Officer Professional Development that starts on 26 August. After the swim test (1350) I was done for the day. I went back to our place to help Johnni unpack our stuff (which thankfully came the day after we moved in, despite our expectations to get it in 2 weeks).

Wednesday:
I had PT at 0615, but since it was raining we had a "Zonk" which means everyone breaks out of formation and goes home. I got home from my 1100 formation around 1125 and had the rest of the day....

Thursday:
My first actual PT session at 0615. I was smoked, so I went home and showered and slept until my 1100 formation. I then laid in bed/slept from 1130 until around 3 or 4 i think? I had a headache from all this hard work down here I guess...

Friday:
PT at 0615, but it was a game day. I played ultimate frisbee until 0700 when I was released. Final formation of the week at 1100 where we got a safety brief. I actually stayed around to ask how I can get a Ranger School slot, so I was tied down all the way until 1150 yesterday. I spent the afternoon waiting for the Time Warner guy to hook up our cable and getting ready to have a few friends over to grill.

That's my first week down here at flight school. It looks like that will be my schedule until the 26th or so and during all holds while I wait on courses. Some people are bored....I am loving it because I get to spend so much time with Johnni. It sounds like free time will disappear once the flying starts...stay tuned for more updates and pics of Alabama.

Our new blog!

Johnni and I decided to start up a blog....Hopefully we update it/post to it much more often than we do to our website.

Check back for updates!