Milestones, difficult decisions, and strange ironies.

Hey Guys,
As the title indicates, milestones have been reached. (I would say “achieved”, but I haven’t actually “achieved” anything.) The milestone I am referring to is my halfway point. Six whole months have gone by since I first arrived in theatre.
Hooray!
Anyway, the picture above is a screen capture of my Baghdad Doughnut as it looked several days ago. I can’t say exactly when I reached the half way point for security reasons. I have to say, it felt pretty good.
I also reached what should be the beginning of my last year in the US Navy. I say “should be” because I intend to submit my letter of resignation this month, which should make me a civilian again when my time ends at my permanent duty station next December. There is no doubt in my mind that I need to be moving in a new direction, and working to accomplish some things that have been very important to me for a very long time. Besides, any brushes with excellence that I may have had over the years have been completely accidental on my part. I can sum up my career in the military in six words.
So much sacrifice, so little happiness.
This would work to,
So much stress, so little achievement.
And I think my friend Jessica would agree…
Not that I’m trying to get down on myself, far from it. I’m just being objective about what I’ve been able to produce, and I think I can do better at some other things, and God forbid, be happy doing it.
This is not as easy a decision as it sounds. The alternative is to get paid good money to go to Grad School in Monterrey California for two years. How many people get paid to go to school? Pretty unreal isn’t it? If I was interested in being “Lieutenant Adequate” for another five years, I might be willing to do it. If I was willing to brown nose for another 13 or 14 years I could collect a nice FAT pension and spend the rest of my life growing a nice pot belly and fishing every day. Unfortunately, I learned somewhere along the line that that kind of behavior is immoral. (Damn you Morals!) Besides, I looked at the money…and it’s just not enough! I think I can do a lot better on my own, and achieve something in the process. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m willing to accept some risk in return for the prospect of a little better reward. In the process I’ll save the taxpayers some money…Wow, It’s like I’m making progress already!

If you ever wonder what goes through peoples minds when they’re on a long military deployment, feel free to revisit the preceding paragraph.

Here’s a fun little tidbit, the other day one of my bosses walked into the office and asked me to write an evaluation on one of my subordinates, who strangely enough had been acting very insubordinate. The person in question was in the room at the time, and heard the conversation. His behavior ever since then has been much improved.

There is one other issue that I feel I need to discuss. It is in regard to an article I read in “Stars and Stripes”. Apparently there is a case before a federal appeals court that is addressing whether the Second Amendments “Right to keep and bear arms” can be applied exclusively to “A well regulated militia”, and not “to the people”. At stake is the unconditional right of the people of the United States to own firearms. This issue is being taken up by the District of Columbia whose argument goes something like this…

“Those founding fathers were pretty smart guys, and when they wrote

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

By golly…they were just trying to show off to all those other countries that had militias that weren’t armed. You see, they were like “Hey George, don’t mess with us! We aren’t like the French! Our citizens aren’t armed, but our militia has muskets!”

I really feel that the question "Have we been invaded by aliens?", has officially been answered.
Folks, if this goes to the Supreme Court, and it probably will, you will without any doubt, be hearing about it again from me. The font will be much bigger, the text will be in bold, and the language will probably be…unpleasant.

Thank you very much for sticking with me for the last six months.
Take care, people.
-Jason