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Today is Dale’s 45th birthday.

Happy Birthday!!!

( I really couldn’t type anymore than three exclamation points. I tried. Really, I did. It was too painful. I so very much want to erase the two extraneous ones, but as a special birthday present I’ll leave it. I’ll probably delete them tomorrow.)

Army culture is young by nature and necessity. Kids enlist at seventeen. Anyone in their twenties is called Sarge. Sometime in your thirties, you are called Top. If you are past forty, you are respectively addressed as Sergeant Major.

Officers are called Sir or Ma’am and referred to by their position or rank: the LT, the CO, the XO, etc. until they hit that ancient benchmark of “The Old Man.” This reference title is usually reserved for the Battalion Commander who is past forty. A soldier would say,  “I have to  go see the old man.” (If a soldier declares this, he is usually not going to attend a happy event.)

After the title of The Old Man, you become The Full Bird or The General and by Army standards are considered quite ancient. Most soldiers do not interact with anyone above the old man.

Most full birds and generals are stacked up at the pentagon keeping each other company and coming up with brilliant ideas like capitalizing the letter F in family.

Dale has wandered among them as one of the multitude of LTCs who spend their time running and making coffee. Initially, he was recognized as a LTC, but as the years tick by, it becomes harder to guess.

A few weeks back, he was maneuvering through the locker room after returning from a run. Because he was wearing his running clothes, he was wearing no rank. A fellow LTC looked up when he realized Dale was trying to get by and said “Oh, excuse me, Sir. I’ll get out of your way.”

His rank may not have moved, but apparently his face has moved past old man to ancient.

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.

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.