NEVERMIND!!!! Damnit

Aaaaand after 2-3 weeks of getting me amped up and pumped for my deployment, it's CANCELLED! Out of the blue, I was notified that the whole thing is off, so I no longer get the awesome experience I was looking forward to. I'm pissed, but there's no one I can specifically be pissed at since it clearly had to come from a very high level to cancel an entire tasking, but mostly I'm disappointed. I was really looking forward to the new things I was going to learn in all the pre-deployment trainings I had, and all the experience I would get from actually being deployed. Plus I was already thinking about some nice things I would get with all that deployment money.... so sad. Now its back to the mundane everyday clinic life. Forever. Also, Taylor missed out on a deployment he could have done but turned down because of mine, AND we cancelled our Rome trip. We're going to try to reschedule since the flights weren't able to be cancelled and we still have those, so if we can re-book the hotel we'll try again. The initial TDY I had scheduled the whole time is still on, so I will still be home May 18th-27th, and the party is still on. Good news there at least. Now its time for a consolation beer. =(

I'm sorry, is my boss a 70 year-old man, or a 15 year-old high school girl??

So I work in a "special" clinic, where we do things a little differently almost all the time, and most the time it pisses me off. It's all because of our civilian in charge. He was AD for over 20 years, and retired 26 years ago, and has been working in his position EVER SINCE. Man is old, and a pain in the ass. I CONSTANTLY butt heads with him. I am very direct and straight-forward, and when I have a problem with someone, I go to that person and hash it out, rather than behaving like a tween and going behind their back and talking to everyone else except them about the problem. This turd chooses to behave like a tween. At the age of 70. Today's issue: Today was not a normal clinic day, so I was going about admin duties and doing pre-deployment stuff, and my NCOIC was doin her thing. All of a sudden, Dude went walking through the clinic with 2 women, headed towards the waiting area. I didn't think too much of it because he randomly shows people the clinic sometimes and I thought this might have been one of these occasions. I was on the phone, but shortly after I hung up, one of the ladies came walking in to my office stating that she was told to check-in with me for her 10:30 appt with our doc. Needless to say, I was slightly confused being that we didn't have appointments today and I wasn't told anything about someone coming in. I asked Dude if he had cleared this with our doc, and he said he had and that we just needed to book her as a walk-in for the computer and he was ready to see her. I figured, alright, I'll do this, then address the issue that I didn't know this was happening later, because this is not the patient's fault, it's Dude's. Turns out it was more complicated because she wasn't in our system so she had to be registered but I don't have that access and my NCOIC was out at the moment. I went looking for someone who could do it, failed, headed back to my clinic, then just in time my NCOIC came back and was able to do it. I asked if she knew about anyone coming and she looked just as surprised as I did, so clearly she didn't know. So after we took care of the patient and she was gone, I went to Dude to speak with him. I have had problems with him in the past perceiving my directness as snippiness, or being disrespectful, when it's not the case at all. This time I purposefully took a neutral stance and explained calmly that it would have been nice to know that someone was coming in so that I could have been prepared, rather than having it sprung on me when I'm already in the middle of other things. I thought this was a reasonable request. He instead proceeds to give me dirty looks the entire time I'm talking to him, then makes the pitiful excuse that I was on the phone when the person called requesting to be seen, as if I would NEVER be off the phone again! I just reiterated that I would like to be kept in the loop, and in a clinic of 5 people, communication shouldn't be an issue. Everyone except the 2 techs knew what was happening, which seems like a problem to me. I could tell he was pissed, which pissed me off because all I did was came to him with a real issue, calmly expressed what had upset me, and left it at that. I had NO attitude, and no other issue with him at that point. I was at my desk working again when he came in and very aggressively questioned me on something I had said, and he had it wrong so I corrected him, informing him what I really said, then he grumped off. I'm just completely fed up at this point because I know he's going to grab my NCOIC when she gets back and immediately bitch to her about how terrible I was and whatnot. Before he could get the chance, as soon as she got back I told her what had happened, and our secretary confirmed my story. Sure enough, he called her in his office to talk to her, and basically threw me under the bus, saying I was standing with my hands on my hips, acting snotty and bitching and being rude. NONE OF THIS HAPPENED!! He made the whole damn thing up! Furthermore, I learned that he had bitched to our secretary about me already, saying the same thing, that I had attitude and stood with my hands on my hips. I cannot express enough how much this pisses me off. He is a grown ass man, going around talking to other people about his issue with me rather than talking to me directly, and making shit up that never happened!! I asked my NCOIC if she could negotiate a meeting with all of us where I could speak to him directly with her there as a mediator, and he obviously refused because he knew he was lying and he didn't want to look like an idiot in front of her. Plus he's a goddamned chicken shit. So anyway, nothing got resolved because he went home early (shocker) and won't be in tomorrow. Honestly, I don't know how I can speak to him without him taking it as an attack, even when I specifically try to be respectful and polite. He sees what he wants to and hears what he wants to and he gets what he wants because no one will stand up to him. I would, but it's just not worth it at this point. I have one more week left with the bastard, then I'm gone and hopefully he's no longer here when I get back from my deployment. He's dead to me! Fucking childish bullshit! Anyway, this was just a rant to get it off my chest and put out the type of shit I put up with on an almost daily basis. FUCK IT!!!

Here's the Deal... Kinda...

I'm deploying! While I don't want to spell out all the details for obvious reasons, I do want my friends and family who I don't call every week to know that it's happening, and Taylor and I are very excited for it. Boo Boo maybe not so much, but he won't know what's happening til I'm gone anyway. I'll still be coming home in May for a visit from the 18th - 27th, so the party is STILL ON!!! I know, that's clearly the most important piece of news. I just have a crap-ton more training now as part of that trip, then a crap-ton more shortly after. I'm stressing a bit right now because I just got all the info on everything I have to do before I go, and holy shit it's a lot. The "good" news is I'll only have about 2 weeks to do it all!! Yay for cramming!! After I get back to Germany from all the training in May and June, I'll have just over 2 weeks to do everything before I come back to the states for the rest of my training and then straight to the actual deployment from there. I'll be gone for over a year with training and deployment combined, so there will be a lot of Skype in my life. Feel free to hit me up when you see me on there, it will be good to hear from anyone I'm sure! It's going to be a great deployment and I'm going to get TONS of experience and skillz that I could never get in the clinic. Plus, not to mention the extra pay will add up so that's a good bonus too. Fear not! This is a good thing, and while I know some of you (aka my mom) will worry, try not to, and try to just think good thoughts and send me goodies lol. That's about all I feel comfortable saying because I don't want to get in trouble for saying too much online, but I'm sure you all get the gist!

Gotta Replace the Whole Assembly!!

I took my car (Patty Cake) in to have my brakes inspected today, thinking it was going to be pretty routine stuff. I knew I needed stuff replaced because my car has been shaking violently when I hit the brakes at a high speed for a little while now. I figured new rotors, new pads, that's about it. Well they called me late morning to give me the verdict. Apparently, one of my calipers has been sticking, which is probably why my rotor went bad and why my car was shaking. They call it "warped rotors" but from what Eric says and what I read online, there really is no such thing as the rotor itself warping, just the brake pads basically burning their sediment forever on to the rotor, making it an uneven surface which really can't effectively be ground down or fixed. HOWEVER, the really bad news was that one of my wheel bearings was so terrible that my wheel can apparently lock up or pop off at any moment, and my car is now unsafe to drive. I have no idea how long it's been in this condition, but my guess is it's been a bit, based on some of the sounds I've been hearing while driving. Also, my rear brake has been leaking brake fluid in to the drum or something, which has been messing up the boot or the foot or whatever it's called (I'm exhausting my knowledge of car stuffs here, don't mock me!), so I need to replace both rear brake drums as well. So all in all, I've gotta replace front pads, rotors, and calipers, rear drums, and both front wheel bearings. Total for parts comes out to $485 something, and labor (when they do it) will be another $465. They have to order parts from the states which takes 7-10 business days, and then I need 6.2 hours of labor for the job, so the earliest they could book my car to be fixed is May 1st. Now my poor lil car has to sit there in the parking lot for almost a month waiting to be fixed because I can't drive it anywhere. At least Taylor and I are now on the same shift, so car-pooling is an option.

We are now considering selling the car in a few months and trying to get what I can out of it now before something else goes wrong. If I sell it now, I can say it has new front and rear brakes, new tires, new alternator, new thermometer and whatnot, and whatever the hell else I've had fixed recently. Blue book and NADA values listed aren't bad, so if I could get about that, I'd feel good, and kinda get back what I've put in to it lately. My fear is that since it's at about 239,000 miles, the transmission might not last me much longer, and I would like to get rid of it before that happens. I don't know, I'm just very hesitant to make a big purchase, but it might be worth it at this point. We'll see. Anyone who has any advice, feel free to send me a message or post a comment, let me know what you think. Also, I do love my lil Escort ZX2, and we've been through a lot together. I have put on about 200,000 miles since I bought it almost 6 years ago. There's a lot of memories and road trips on that slutty lady! So that was my day. Well not really, there were a lot of other aspects to it, but that was my main problem of the day. And now I'm spent!!