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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.

Today was my much anticipated first day at my new assignment at the Pentagon. This morning was also my first time slugging. The slug lines are informal carpools that form to take advantage of the HOV lanes going into DC. There are two lots about 1/2 mile from our house where drivers pick up extra passengers so that they meet the 3-person minimum for using the HOV lanes. The HOV trip to the Pentagon from Stafford is about 45 minutes. During heavy traffic, in the regular lanes, this can easily take two hours. The driver benefits by the savings of time while the passengers receive a free ride. You can read more about this at http://slug-lines.com.

Last week I cleaned up my motorcycle, put in some gas from the can, charged the battery and tried to get it started after sitting in the garage for the past year. But as Mugs already posted, I couldn’t get it to start. I ended up buying a new battery earlier this week, and the bike started up very easily after that. We planned for Mugs to drop me off at the slug line in the morning and pick me up in the afternoon. I didn’t want to ride my motorcycle to/from the lot because then I would have to lug around my full-face helmet and leather jacket all day. Yesterday I decided that the solution was to buy a half-helmet. Since the lot is so close to the house, I can wear a half-helmet with the ACUs and leave the leather jacket at home. Here’s a picture of me the day before going back to work.

Dale with Bike

I got up at 0500 this morning to walk Blaze, planning on riding over to the slug lot at 0600. By the time I fed and walked Blaze, it was already 0545. Normally after a period of leave, I shave the beard off the night before going back to work. Unfortunately, I didn’t do that this time. I was still shaving at 0600 when Mugs got up to start getting ready for the day. I eventually got out the door around 0620. Then my bike wouldn’t start. I must have drained the little bit of fuel I put in the tank while I was on my test ride yesterday. Anyway, at 0630, Mugs came out and gave me a ride to the slug lot.

There were probably about 20 people standing in the Pentagon line when I arrived. The line moved quickly, and within 10 minutes, I was next in line. A car pulled up to the front of the line, the driver said “Pentagon”, I got in the car with the next guy in line, and we headed to the Pentagon. Fortunately, I had read the rules and etiquette for slugging online and understood that conversation while slugging is not permitted unless the driver initiates it. After a nice, quiet 50 minute drive, I was dropped off at the Pentagon steps at 0730 for my first day of inprocessing. The post is already quite long, so I won’t go into any details on my first day of work. I also won’t talk about the garage door breaking for Mugs (she can post that). After 1 day of inprocessing I have 3 new security badges and 0 computer accounts. At 1600, I walked out to the Pentagon parking lot and stood in the Stafford – Rte 610 line. By 1645, I was back in Stafford and waiting for Mugs to pick me up at the lot.

Tomorrow I might get some computer accounts, but maybe I shouldn’t rush it!