It’s that time of year again. I was due for this annual training requirement, which I somehow only had to complete twice in twenty-three years before I arrived at this base (once before my remote assignment to Iceland in 1987 and again before my deployment to Kuwait in late 2000). This illustrates how much the Air Force has changed in the last eight years. I first took it in Virginia in anticipation of deploying for the war (January 2003, but I didn’t get tasked). Then, I had to take it again before deploying last year. My year is up, and even though my window to deploy is May – September, I won’t be doing so for two reasons. First, I have a medical profile for my knee which renders me nondeployable until at least June 1 (unless I can get the doc to change that when I see him in April, but frankly, the knee will never get much better than it is right now–and that’s not the doc’s fault; it’s my genetics). Second, I will be changing to a new assignment (at a new base in a new state) in June. (More on that whenever I get the official assignment notification–I am pleased with it, though.)

But I still had to fill the square for this training. I have a gazillion things to do that aren’t getting done, and this class took away three hours of that time. The instructor liked to use humor, and he did a good job. As usual, I wasted my time picking up a training chem suit–we never opened the bag. Each time I take this class, though, I learn something new. Today was no exception. Although we saw a limited demonstration of the suit and no demonstration of the mask (which, if I were deploying, would have bothered me), he gave us literally dozens of reasons why we do or don’t do certain things, and that was valuable.

So, I’m grumpy tonight and trying to write appraisals on a couple of my people–due tomorrow, I think. I also have to triage my inbox–I managed to decimate it down to more than half what it was earlier today, but I still have 43 items with slightly more than 20 needing some action from me. I have two days before I have to sit in two days of meetings (the second day, I’m supposed to be in two places at once, and I haven’t resolved that yet…). Both are for projects I have a significant role in, and both are pet projects of my boss. I still have to schedule and plan a get acquainted and planning meeting for the new half of my office to meet the old half. I guess I’ll set that up for Monday, since I didn’t get it set up for tomorrow. Oh, and I have 29 Air Force-wide annual awards to rate by, I think, Monday. Fortunately, I rate them all independently of one another, because all these people did good things last year. I volunteered for this to learn more about what a good award package looks like (writing awards is one of my numerous weak areas). And, of course, I have to provide my boss with inputs for my annual appraisal–that’s due before I leave in June, so I have to figure out how to convey that what I do is important and that it has impact somewhere in the world.

I experienced a sharp pain in my right eye yesterday afternoon followed by an intermittent dull pain. I stopped at the optometry clinic this morning on my way to work just so they could tell me everything was OK, and I had nothing to worry about. They performed several tests, could find nothing wrong, and sent me on my way. Good. While I really want both the knee and eyes to recover well from their surgeries and cause no further problems, if I had to choose, I’d take the eyes every time. Thankfully, that seems to be happening. Vision, while still not as crisp as I’d like, is good. I haven’t even needed my reading glasses for the last couple days. I can’t imagine that lasting long.