Blah..Blah..Blah..Today...

Ok so to get you up to date on what all happened while I was gone. Hmm....where to start? I guess I will just jumble it all up and hope you understand. Haha. Typical me.

So for the second part of OT&E we went up to Portsmouth Virginia. That was a terrible idea. The boat broke and we got stuck there for an extra week. Totally sucked. It was cold and gloomy almost the whole time. If it wasn't for the bar on base, we would have gone crazy. Virginia can be summed up in two categories: Work and Play (what little of it we got).

Work

So every time the boat went out, something went wrong. I'm not going into details but we eventually got it handled enough to make it home. We also got our asses handed to us on our first attempt home. We made it to Hatteras, NC and had to turn around because we were going head into 20 foot waves. Not cool. I flew out of my rack twice on that night. 

We also had everyone in a 20 mile radius coming to tour the boat. It seemed non-stop. Uhh. The Atlantic Area Commander even taped his Holiday Speech on our boat. Yup, we were the new kids. During the 3 weeks we were there we really only had 3 days off. I fought for a 4th day and won, but most of us worked a little bit at some point in the day. 

The command did schedule a couple of moral days. Forced moral. It really wasn't that bad, but I would have just enjoyed sleeping all day. One day we went down to the Outer Banks and visited all the Richard Etheridge sites. I got to stop at my old local bar on the way home, so that was awesome! I really miss the people there. 

The other trip was to Washington DC. We left a 5 am and didn't get back till 2 am! Long ass day. AND we didn't even get to see everything. We did get to see part of the White House and Congress and what not. I will admit I didn't really see anyone working.

Play

Not much play really happened, but we made the best out of a bad situation. At least I can always count on us to get together and do that! We did go out on the town as much as we could. If not out then at the Wheel House (the base bar).

There was ALOT of shenanigans. As usual. Dancing, sporadic karaoke, random acts of drunkenness, birthdays and us just losing our damn minds. Haha. In this extra time, I went with one of the guys on the boat to his tattoo guy. I had every intention to just go and hang out. But of course I ended up getting on at the end of the night. I may have had a few to drink at that point. Hence the post on My Thirteenth Tattoo. Yeeeeeaaaahhhhh. I'm a little crazy. 

I'm just glad to be back home. I had duty on Christmas Eve and a check in day on the 28th, but other than that I have been off and will be until the 7th. I am pretty content in doing absolutely nothing! I have gone out a couple of times but mostly I have just been jogging everyday and just relaxing. I need time off to just be me and be away from work. Cause starting next week it's back to work, then back out on patrol.