Day the 7th at Fort McCoy

[aadler]

 

I was wrong yesterday about the coming schedule: I tested on five things today. (I’ll have to redo one. I had some minor bobbles — got a couple of items out of order — but that task was so short and simple that more than one error necessitated a retest.) This is only the sixth day of fifteen — I don’t count the day spent in-processing — just past a third of the way through, so why do I feel like I’m over the hump?

As planned, I had a light supper last night, and two light meals today (meat and salad in two cases, with rice and gravy added for the third). That was to get me through leading PT today and tank me up for the near future. I have three days remaining before my second weigh-in, and I’m determined to have more than enough margin to carry me through it. I didn’t go to the gym today, but I’ll resume running and weighing tomorrow, with no more food — after breakfast tomorrow morning — until my revised weight has been officially recorded.

During my time here, I’ve been using an electric razor. I had one in Iraq, but though it shaved nice and close, the thin foil over the blades tended to come loose or fall apart (I saw that happen to other people, so apparently it was typical of that particular model). I requested a replacement, in a letter to my family, but nobody could find what I had described, so they asked a friend who was in lower management at Wal-Mart. She discovered that it was a seasonal model, not available again until the following year, and consequently she selected what she thought was a comparable model. What she sent me was not comparable, it was about five times better. Doesn’t shave quite as close, but it’s rugged and reliable, and I’ve used it for five years and through three deployments. I saw today that the PX sells razors especially designed for soldiers who want to shave their heads, which was what made me think of it; I used the replacement razor to shave my head for maybe eight months in Iraq, and it works as well at that as at everything else.

Funny, isn’t it, the things we remember. I didn’t (and don’t) particularly like the young woman concerned, but what she did wound up mattering more than anything else I got during that time.