Back In Texas

Happy day after Valentine's Day. Yesterday was quite a momentous day for me with none of the reason having anything to do with Valentines day. Now that I think about it though, it being valentine's day yesterday did ruin my plans to enjoy a nice steak and mashed potatoes dinner followed by a movie. Traffic was horrendous because everyone was out trying to get to their valentine's day date destination and the wait at the restaurant was 80-90 minutes, so I went to Denny's instead and had breakfast for dinner followed by watching TV in my room instead of trying to endure the crowd at the theater.

Back to the reason yesterday was momentous. First of all, though not the first momentous thing that happened, I graduated from my course and left Fort Leavenworth. Unlike the other 4ID people in the course I can not say that I was looking forward to going back to Fort Hood. If I could've stayed a couple weeks later at Fort Leavenworth and then deployed straight from there I would've gladly jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, no genie pops out of a lamp for me and says "your wish is my command," and so now I am back in Texas. The nice thing is that it is a four day weekend for President's Day. Since I graduated yesterday morning and then departed right after graduation it is more like a 5.5 day holiday for me, though I now have plans to go to SRC (final pre-deployment records and medical checks) at 6:30 am on Tuesday morning with my XO.

The other event in my life that occurred yesterday is that the Army decided that, since I haven't murdered anyone or gotten any DUI's, I am promotable to Captain. They posted the promotion list yesterday morning and, if the trend from the past two years holds true for this year, 1 July will be the date of the big event. Iraq must be my lucky promotion spot since it is where I was promoted to 1LT on my last full day there in 2006.

There have been a few changes around where I live that I immediately noticed driving in to town. For one, there is now a starbucks in Harker Heights, which makes two for the greater Fort Hood area. Another change is that across the freeway from the new Starbucks they are building a Barnes & Nobles. I actually let out an audible cheer in my car when I saw the under construction sign because the only other book stores within 20-50 miles are a Family Christian Bookstore (which I think I've bought out), and a Hastings Books & Music. Of course, my joy was short-lived when I realized that it is highly unlikely that they will have the store finished in less than 2.5 weeks. Oh well, it's something to look forward to when I return (if it is to Fort Hood to which we return and not Fort Carson).

There was one other major change that really surprised me. When I opened the front door of the house I expected to be greeted by my roommate's rambunctious yellow lab, Calvin. Instead, I was quite surprised to see a little yellow lab pup (8 weeks old) sitting in the hallway and no Calvin in sight. My roommate wasn't home and so I took to calling the new pup "little guy" (though it turns out she's a girl) and was so distracted playing with the puppy that it took me awhile to get around to unloading my Jeep. My fears of Calvin having died or been given away were put to rest when Karen and Calvin walked in the door later. Apparently Calvin is a bit jealous of Violet (the puppy has a name!), but Violet adores Calvin and tries to imitate everything he does. Karen lets Calvin sleep on her bed, but since Violet also sleeps up there Calvin now refuses to sleep on the bed and instead crawls under the bed to sleep. Violet, wanting to be like Calvin, follows him under the bed whereupon Calvin growls at her. Unlike Calvin, Violet is an angel save for the fact that she started gnawing on my running shoe while it was still on my foot. Hopefully Violet will be a good influence on Calvin and they will one day get along.