Herding Cats, Killing Flies...A Day's Retrospective

I've been writing up my "What Chris Wants" blog, so I thought before I finished that one I would post another one. Plus, Mindy has her hands full with her mother-in-law and two sick or getting sick kids.


So, Chris, what is it you do here? I have many hats in my battalion, and it is usually a hodge podge of different things, but mostly I am chained to our Tactical Operations Center, known as the TOC (pronounced "tock," just like any good military acronym). I am the battalion's S-6, or communications officer, and that means the TOC is my baby anyway, but I was tagged for duty in the TOC as a Battle Captain- a job that sounds prestigious but mostly involves herding cats. So pretty much everything that happens in the battalion passes through me at some point. At the same time I am doing that, I am bombarded with questions about communications and networking that I may or may not know since I am working as Battle Captain. It becomes increasingly hard to do both jobs well, so I am at the point where I just do both jobs good enough. I tend to think of myself as a pretty capable person, but it is frustrating when the very people who took you from your full-time primary job to go do your full-time secondary job expect you to be 100% there in each area. I keep telling myself that it comes with the territory of being a captain now- no more "I'm just a dumb lieutenant" excuses- but really that doesn't make me feel any better.

"So what does a day look like for Chris?" you may be asking yourself. Well, funny you should ask, Alan. I usually get up between 8-10 am, depending on how I'm feeling and how adjusted I am to my schedule. I take a shower in a trailer that may or may not be closed for cleaning, the shower heads often hit or miss as to whether they'll be working or broken. Once I get dressed, I wander over to the TOC to do some S-6 work and to show my face for a little while. My real primary goal at this point is to begin herding all of the staff who eat together to lunch. That takes some time- I had to send out a schedule to get them to cooperate...we're like cows who wander aimlessly through a gate. I officially take over my duties at noon, and then I work in the TOC until midnight, taking breaks to shoot the breeze and to go to dinner chow. My shift mostly consists of sending and receiving reports, making sure people are in the right place at the right time, writing emails and a few orders, and drinking terrible, terrible coffee. I then spend the next two hours after I get off shift, until around 2 am, doing something else. I am trying to get my body adjusted to staying up that late so I can start working out after my shift. Currently, I end up in my office just unwinding from a long day. But then I eventually go to bed and start it all over again.

Really the highlight of my day today was killing a fly. We have these swatters that look like tennis racquets...only they are charged with electricity and will destroy anything in their path. I have been trying to kill a fly with this thing for days- Iraqi flies are disgusting and I am slightly genocidal when it comes to them. So I was being pestered by a fly in my office, swung the paddle, and ZAP! A big blue flash and a dead fly hits the ground. I literally talked about this incident for the rest of the day. Some people relay home stories of how they helped create a "free and democratic" Iraq....and then there's me.

Alright...it's late, I'm tired, and I'm telling fly-killing stories. Time to go for now.