manrymission.com

About two weeks ago, I attended a 1-day Staff Officer Orientation for personnel recently assigned to the Pentagon. The briefers included many senior officers and civilians from the Department of the Army, including Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and Chief of Staff of the Army General George Casey. One of the first speakers, LTG David Huntoon, the Director of the Army Staff, talked about adjusting to life at the Pentagon. He remarked that most of us in the audience were coming from assignments with a lot of responsibilities to new jobs where we are only responsible for our little computer cubicle. He cautioned that we may have a difficult time adjusting to this change and lamenting about our fate in life. His sage advice was “Get over it”. Honestly, this transition has been much more difficult than I anticipated. My attitude wasn’t helped by the state of the cubicle I inherited (thanks, Espo).

I should have known what to expect. I replaced a very good friend, Espo. One of his online monikers is TrashMan. He is a hoarder. For some reason, though, I wasn’t mentally prepared for the piles of files, documents and folders on the desk. I have spent countless hours going through each document to identify what needs to be saved and what can be trashed. He promised he would organize everything before he left, and in his own way, he did. The morning after Espo moved to his new assignment (also in the DC area), I arrived to find the piles shifted around and labeled with yellow post-it notes saying:

1. Look at 1st (But keep together… I will take some of it)
2. Misc Classified Read Browse 2nd (or as time permits)
3. Read when time
4. Misc Stuff Peruse at Leisure
5. Was Mostly Here
6. Mostly Old, But I did Put some Here
7. Real Old

After six weeks of work, I have almost finished the purge. Because I work in a secure facility, to discard any document, I have to review each page, tear it into small pieces and place the pieces in a burn bag for disposal. The burn bags are basically brown paper grocery bags for collecting classified materials for destruction. To date, I have filled twenty (20) burn bags! Espo has stopped by a couple of times in the midst of the purge. Although he hasn’t said anything, I can tell he is emotionally troubled by the amount of things I’ve sent away in burn bags. Oh well. As LTG Huntoon would say, he just needs to “Get over it”!

On Thursday, I attended the quarterly Army Geospatial Governance Board (GGB) meeting. The GGB is co-chaired by the Army Chief of Intelligence (G2) and the Army Chief of Engineers. Both of these guys are 3-star Generals. The G2 is one of my numerous bosses. My immediate supervisor is a Colonel-level civilian; his boss is a Colonel; her boss is a Colonel; and his boss is the G2. So when I say I work for the 3-star General, I really mean I work for Civilian #1 who works for Colonel #1 who works for Colonel #2 who works for the general (G2). COL #1 has been in G2 about a month longer than I have. The first day I met her, she commented that she was surprised with the number of meetings that everyone had to attend. I have found this to be very true. I guess I was spoiled for the year I was in Iraq since I eliminated all meetings that I had control over!

For every meeting, there’s a prep meeting. For every briefing, there’s a pre-briefing. It looks like I’ll be spending a lot of time giving pre-briefings in prep meetings so that when it’s time for the real meeting nobody is surprised by what is in my real briefing. I’ll have help from Jim, Pat and Tony, the other members of the Geospatial Team. The prep meeting for the GGB is a Council of Colonels. So for the GGB, we pre-briefed our boss (Civilian #1), then with Civilian #1, we pre-briefed COL #1. The Geospatial Team, Civilian #1 and COL #1 attended the Council of Colonels. After that, Jim, Civilian #1 and I pre-briefed the G2 on what happened in the Council of Colonels and what to expect in the GGB. We didn’t think COL #2 was going to be involved in the GGB, so we didn’t pre-brief him before we pre-briefed the G2. That was a mistake. He wasn’t happy about it and let us know. So we pre-briefed him two hours before the GGB was scheduled to start. The final tally was 4 pre-briefings and 1 prep meeting, all for a single 2-hour meeting.

For the GGB, I was the designated note-taker. My counterpart in the Chief of Engineers office, LTC Jeff Martin, was the designated slide flipper. Immediately after the GGB ended, I compared notes with Pat and Jeff. Originally, I had captured 4 taskers. After comparing notes, the list grew to 7 taskers. I put the taskers into a document and emailed it out to a few folks for review. After this review, the task list grew to 9. The next morning, Friday, I reworked the task list and ended up with 11 tasks. Task #11 was “Create a Task Tracker”. As I was adding Task #11 to the list, I felt like I was stuck in a Dilbert cartoon, and I was Wally. As soon as I sent it out, Jeff called and said we needed to add one more task which was “Schedule the next GGB”. So the final tally was 12 tasks.

I have meetings to prepare for meetings, briefings to prepare for briefings, and even tasks to prepare for tasks. I don’t know how it could possibly get any better.

Dale is home today because of the dedication of the Pentagon Memorial created to honor the victims of 9-11.  There are so many people attending the dedication that they told those who work at the Pentagon to stay home today.  Every September 11th, I feel a great sadness for all those who lost someone they love and I pray that the Holy Spirit will comfort them.  I think the government has renamed 9-1l: Patriot Day.  The kids are supposed to wear red, white, and blue to school.  I understand that view, but for me, 9-11 will always be a day of remembrance and mourning.

It’s quite humorous to now experience the same events as my husband and then read his viewpoint of them.  His first day of commute from his perspective had a few problems…to me, it was a disaster.  Hence the wise advice of always having two or more witnesses.  He had gotten his motorcycle running over the weekend, so I was still in bed when he attempted to leave for work.  There are plenty of dedicated wives who get up in the morning and make their husband’s breakfast and kiss him goodbye.  And then, I am quite sure that there is at least one lazy wife who sleeps in as late as possible and does not get out of bed until she needs to wake the kids and feed them.  So, I came awake to the sound of an engine being turned over and over and over with no hope of starting.  I got up, got dressed, grabbed my purse, and got in the van.  My husband reluctantly put his motorcycle back in the garage.  He had been running late already because the night prior, he had not shaved off his two weeks of beard growth.  In the past, he had always shaved off his beard the night before he went back to work.  However, after being forced to shave every day for an entire year, he wanted to hold onto his beard as long as possible.  I told him to keep the mustache, but he wouldn’t.  He should of joined the Navy.  I think they let you grow a beard in the Navy.  I’ve always wondered why you can’t have a beard in the Army.  I use the “No Beards in the Army” rule as motivation for him to retire from the Army.  “When you get out of the Army, you can grow a beard,” I tell him.  Now, I have to add, “But you might have to dye it.”  A friend I haven’t seen for 10+ years asked me if I had gotten old.  I told him, “I must have because I now have an old husband.”  Anyway, I dropped Dale off to stand in the long slug line approximately 40 minutes later than he had hoped to be standing there.  Afterwards, I dropped the kids off at school.  Later on that day, upon returning from picking Zeke up from preschool, I heard a loud metal on metal screeching sound that made Zeke and I jump.  I had no idea what it was, so I stood in the garage momentarily confused.  I had just opened the sliding door on the van and a large truck was driving by.  When I didn’t see a giant scratch on the van, I assumed the truck was dragging something on the road.  I then went inside.  After 2 hours home, Zeke and I loaded back up in the car to pick up the other kids.  My garage door refused to move and after several futile attempts to lift it myself, I realized I wasn’t going anywhere.  I called the school first and asked a friend to bring the kids home.  I then called the company who had put in the garage door.  “There was a loud screeching noise and now my garage door won’t open,” I told the girl on the phone.  “You probably broke a spring.  Look above the door, ” she replied.  I looked and sure enough a spring was broken.  “Can you please send someone out to fix it?” I asked.  “No. Sorry.  All our repairmen are done for the day.  We’ll send someone tomorrow,” she said.  “It’s 3pm and you advertise 24 hour emergency repair.  My car is stuck in my garage,” I replied.  “Maybe someone can help you lift the door,” she said.  “Thanks for you help,” I said.  I hung up and decided that it was silly of me to think 24 hour emergency service should involve the hours between 3pm and 8am.  I was now seeing visions of Dale arriving at the slug lot and having to walk home to finish off his terrible first day commute.  The kids arrived home and my friend who had experienced a broken garage door spring before informed me of the best way to tackle the problem.  Josiah, Abby, Gabe and I spaced ourselves along the garage door.  With a “Lay Hold…Heave” we got it moving.  I was soon covered in sweat and irritation, but it wouldn’t stay up.  Abby, who had sore arms the next day, and Josiah then stood on a ladder to hold the door in place while I backed out of the garage with Gabe as ground guide.  We all then lowered it back down.  I left to pick up Dale, who inspite of all the days problems was now a firm believer in slugging.  The next morning two guys came to replace the springs.  They lifted the door and hooked it in place like it was the simplest task in the world.  Once again, I observed how to do a task simply and compared it to my effort to accomplish the same task.  I have a great ability to make everything more difficult than it is.  It must be part of the Meloch gene.  I mentioned to the guys how loud it was when the spring broke.  To which one replied, “Yeh, it’s even louder when it breaks in your face.”  I thought it best to keep my 7 hour emergency repair comment to myself.

Although I was hesistant to slug initially, I am now a convert. It’s kind of like riding with Aegis. I don’t have to drive. While I’m in the vehicle, I don’t talk to anyone and usually close my eyes for a little snooze. At the end of the mission, I get dropped off again. It’s very convenient. The key to successful slugging, however, is a flexible schedule. If I had to be at work at a certain time, slugging would not be a good idea because it is so unpredictable. One day I was in line for less than a minute, but another day I was in line for 30 minutes. The average time to slug in from Stafford to the Pentagon appears to be about 45 minutes. Last Thursday, it took me 1 1/2 hours to get to work because of an accident in the HOV lanes. But the next day, it only took 30 minutes. The lady I rode with that day was flying. I said a little prayer, closed my eyes and went to sleep for the trip!

Yesterday I went for a run during lunch. Today I hurt! I basically took 3 months off from running (Jun-Aug). It’s time to get back into the groove since all of my civvies are much tighter than they should be. Fortunately, I wear ACUs to work everyday! Anyway, I ran from the Pentagon, across Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial and back to the Pentagon. The whole run was about 3.5 miles, but today I was walking like I had just run a marathon. I was planning on running again today until I woke up this morning. I guess I’m on a day-on day-off running schedule until I get back into a little better shape. By the way, I had to pay about $200 for an annual membership for the Pentagon Athletic Club to use the showers, unless I wanted to pay a $3 daily fee for each use. Now Mugs has even more reason to remind me to run so that I get my money’s worth.