Due to a lack of anything better to do, I now have a very good uniform, especially my boots. I'll never be satisfied by the shine on my boots, but I'm getting better at it. First I start out with a good base of regular black shoe polish. I shine it as best as I can with that with a cloth. After I've got a good shine with the regular shoe polish, I add a top coat or two of lincoln wax black shoe polish. That makes the shine even more brilliant. After a few coats of that, I top it all off with Seal-a-shine. I discovered it at General Jackson's the other day. It's a liquid that "enhances and protects your shine, and serves as an excellent base for your next shine." I then edge dress the edges of the soles of the boots. The result is a shiny, black boot.

Today was another semi-interesting day. PT this morning was supposed to be combatives, but instead we did a regular muscle failure workout while in bdu's and boots. I then showered at the gym, drove to the pack shed, ate my breakfast, and read the Bible. At 9 I went into the pack shed to begin the work day. The morning I spent with the parachute maintanece guys learning how to patch a parachute, trying my hand at a little sewing, and then watching the guys sew for the rest of the morning. I was tempted to ask them if they ever thought that they would spend their time in the army sewing. For lunch I drove over to the mini-mall, parked my car, ate lunch and read some more of The Princess Bride, and then took a 30 min nap. At 12:45 I headed back to the pack shed, and entered it at 1pm. I spent the afternoon learning how to pack a 100 ft diameter, G-11 parachute. It has a load capacity of 5,000 lbs. Yesterday I learned how to pack the G-12 parachute, which is only 64 ft in diameter. My knife has come in very handy the past few days in the pack shed. There are tons of cords and strings that need to be cut when packing the parachutes. At 5 I headed back to the hotel. Yesterday I went over to Matt's and did a load of laundry, and he said I could do another load today at either his or Julia's place, but I'm feeling to lazy this evening to drive across town to do laundry. I'll wait till another day, or come up wtih $2.50 in quaters and do it here.

I'm liking this week more than the previous weeks because I get to actually do some stuff, plus interact a lot more with the soldiers. I didn't like the fact that before I barely even saw any of the soldiers in the platoon. Now these soldiers are actually teaching me how to do their job, plus I can ask them a ton of questions and get to know what it is like for them, and they have a lot of questions for me. Hopefully they won't lose all of their respect for me tomorrow at PT when they see how bad of a runner I am.