Still Waiting for Orders

1 August 2008
1930

My current mobilization orders end next Thursday, and I am still waiting for my new orders. To those not familiar with how the military does things, this may not seem like much. But in the military, orders are everything. Ever heard the saying “nature abhors a vacuum”? Well, the Army abhors a soldier without orders. Everything depends on them. If you have orders, you belong someplace, and they can take care of you. Without orders, you can’t do anything and it’s hard for people to do things for you.

Everywhere you go, people want to see your orders. If you are getting some kind of service (such as a plane flight), you often have to give them one or more copies or your orders. It’s like having a passport when you travel. Soldiers in transit usually have a folder with multiple copies of their orders. You need three copies here, six copies there, etc., depending on what you are doing and where you are going. I have a copy of my current mobilization orders folded up in my wallet and on me at all times.

Without orders I literally can’t be here. I won’t get paid, can’t eat in the mess hall, can’t travel, etc. The command will undoubtedly take care of me in the long run, but in the short run it could be inconvenient.

The reason for this situation is that normally you are supposed to request new orders 60 days in advance. Since I was scheduled to demobilize and just volunteered for this tour less than a month ago, everything had to be rushed. The orders come from HRC (Human Resources Command) in St. Louis. Once I submitted my paperwork, it had to be processed by USARCENT at Ft. McPherson, GA, and then transmitted to HRC for action. There is an online personnel system they can check to see the status of the request, and it is still in process.

It sounds like just a paperwork drill but the real world effect is that I can’t tell anybody when I’m leaving, where I’m going next, or when exactly I’ll be home. So we can’t make any definite plans. It’s kind of a pain.

Naturally, the military has an acronym for everything. The kind of orders I am waiting for are called CO-ADOS. That means “Contingency Operations – Active Duty Operational Support”. In MILspeak, “contingency” means wartime-type activities. Once my CO-ADOS orders come through, I can stay in theater, go directly to Qatar next week, in-process at Camp As Sayliyah, and then go on leave from there.

You can also get just plain ADOS orders, but you aren’t supposed to be over here unless you are CO-ADOS. So the backup plan is that if I don’t get CO-ADOS orders in time, they will fly me back to Atlanta, issue ADOS orders, and send me on leave from there. When my CO-ADOS orders come, they will amend the dates to take me off ADOS and put me on CO-ADOS status.

Right now I am pretty much ready to go, even though I’m hoping to stay a few more days to help with the transition. I could be trying to get on a plane to Atlanta on Monday or I could be going to Qatar on Thursday. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Mood: Impatient
Music: Neil Young – Rockin’ In The Free World

Apparently I Can Be Trusted

Thursday 30 July, 2008
2100

Today I got the official notice that my permanent security clearance has been approved. I checked my personnel record online, and sure enough there it was, with an official date of 15 July 2008. I’m surprised it only took them 15 days to notify me. I pretty much expected them to put a physical letter on a slow boat to China, and maybe get it before the end of my next tour. But I actually got an email informing me of the decision.

The process is so opaque, and they are so backlogged, that I absolutely did not expect a decision this quickly. I never doubted that the approval would come eventually – it was just a question of how long it would take and how much BS I would have to go through before they made the decision. But regardless of how confident I was that it would come through in the end, it’s still a relief to know that the process is complete and I now have a clearance that will be good until I retire.

So it turns out that the whole exercise of extending for another tour was unnecessary, and I could be on my way home for good instead of just going on leave before coming back for another year. But hindsight is 20:20, and there was no way to know that at the time the decision had to be made. Now I’m way past the point of no return. And just a couple of days ago I got a recruiting email advertising a Senior ROTC instructor position at Montana State University in Bozeman....*sigh*.

Fortunately they agreed to let me take 45 days of leave, so I’ll get to be home to see my two oldest kids off to college and see my younger daughter play in her high school marching band at the first couple of football games. That’s priceless.

Right now I’m re-packing my stuff, trying to arrange my footlockers to weigh less than 70 lb. so they can be mailed. I did a rough calculation and decided that postage was cheaper than buying new “household” things, so I disassembled the shelves I had bought here and am sending them along with various other housekeeping stuff.

Mood: OK
Music: ZZ Top: Can’t Stop Rockin’

A Place For My Stuff

Sunday 27 July 2008
1730

I spent today packing up my room. I can’t pack completely since I still have at least a week to go, but I could pack up most of my stuff.

It’s kind of amazing how much stuff I accumulated in two years here. Even more amazing when you consider that my room is only about 7 ½ x 11 feet. But I’m sort of a packrat, I tend to overpack when traveling, and I like books and movies. So it’s no wonder I could barely turn around in here!

Part of what took so long was sorting through files and papers, throwing away what wasn’t needed and filing other things properly. Lots of things just got stuck in convenient nooks and crannies over time, but really needed to be filed. I actually have six years’ worth of tax records over here with me, since I had to document that situation to get my security clearance approved. Once that is settled (and the IRS accepts my 1040X for 2006), I’ll be able to send about a linear foot of files home for storage.

It looks kind of bare with no pictures on the walls and bulletin board (and no more bulletin board!). It will look even emptier when I actually mail the boxes. Some of them are going home, but most are going to Qatar.

The title of this blog post is in honor of George Carlin. I didn’t write a post when he died, but I was sad to see him go. He was certainly one of my favorite comedians. What made him especially funny to me was not only that he was completely irreverent, but that he looked at everyday life and saw the humor in it. He once said “That’s my job…reminding you of things you already knew, but forgot to laugh at the first time.”

So here is George Carlin, talking about “A Place for My Stuff”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoge6QzcGY&feature=related

Mood: Happy
Music: George Carlin