Events Up to Now

2006-09-03T01:56:08Z

This will be the first LJ entry for my year-long Iraq deployment. I'll catch everyone up on what's happened so far.

Thursday, August 22nd, my roommate Annie and friend Allison took me out to O'Brien's to get me hammered. It worked. I think I threw up about three times at the bar, and a few more times at home. Whiskey hits hard. I think I had three glasses of Maker's Mark and a shot of JD. Annie, Allison, and my neighbor Christina did a good job taking care of me. Thanks for that, guys!

Needless to say, the flight out to Killeen/Ft. Hood, TX was not a fun one. But I got there, and they had separated my bags between two different planes, so I had to wait an hour to get my third bag. That was stupid. A guy named SGT Ortega picked me up. He didn't strike me as extremely friendly. I got to my room and I was informed that I would only be staying there for a night, and then I was moving.

The next day, SGT Ortega knocked on my door at 9:00 AM informing me that I was late for the formation that he didn't bother to mention to me the day before. Yeah, he's an asshole.

The first "formation" I had was basically a big clusterfuck. There were E-5s clawing at eachother for power, and E-4s and below just watching the mayhem ensue. I learned that I was stuck in a "problem platoon." It's basically a platoon for people who aren't going to Iraq because of some reason or another. Me and two other NCOs were the exceptions, since we were just waiting on orders.

Anyway, skip ahead a few days of bullshit hard work and manual labor to Friday, September 1st. I rented a car and me and two guys that I just met drove down to Austin, TX to partake in some festivities. Last night was pretty crazy. We basically intended to hit the bars, but I think the bars hit us. I had something like five beers, three gin & tonics, a white russian, and a couple shots. But I wasn't too drunk, because I spread it all out. One of my friends has high blood pressure, and he wasn't feeling good, so he took off. The other met a friend there and disappeared for a while. When we finally got kicked out of the bars, he was gone. I found out later that he had done a few lines of coke on top of being extremely drunk. NOTE: Don't do drugs, kids. They're not cool. Because then your friends end up having to take you back to the hotel and get you to stop talking to random strangers.

We went to this bar called the Dizzy Rooster. I'm not a Real World fan, but they tell me that on the Real World, Austin, a guy goes in to the Dizzy Rooster, starts talking shit, goes out, and some people follow him out and beat the shit out of him. Long story short, they knock his eyeball out of the socket. So, yeah. Ouch. My experience was much more pleasant.

I hardly slept last night, because shortly after going to sleep (I took the floor, since there's three of us in a double room), my druggie room mate finally got back from smoking and passed out and immediately started snoring. Me and my other roommie couldn't sleep for shit. I think I actually went to bed at 3:00 AM. Then, through all that snoring, I finally gave up on sleeping at 8:00 AM. I went out looking for breakfast. I had steak and eggs, and it cost me something like $25. I think I know why I don't have any money left from my Kosovo deployment.

Today, I pretty much just drove around. Austin sucks for driving. I-35 pretty much turns into stop-and-go traffic, and you're better off driving through town. It took us about 2 hours to find the mall that was about 20 minutes away. Then that mall ended up sucking anyway. I got a shirt from Express, because I only had one civilian shirt with me. I got a Whataburger. It's a Texas thing. For the rest of you, don't worry, you're not missing anything.

Now I'm going to go out and drink more. Because I won't be drinking any in Iraq, so I'm going to party it up here. Austin is a cool place. It's pretty much like a huge version of Omaha. Really spread out, lots of people, and no good public transportation. I probably wouldn't mind living in Austin if it weren't for the fact that it's in Texas. I still hate Texas.

Diary of a Grumpy Old Man

Events Up to Now