Fitting End to the Day

So I fell asleep again after my alarm and woke quite rested, of my own accord, a half-hour before liberty expired on-board for all hands. It's never good to wake rested... on a working day, that means being late. So I flew into my uniform and out the door as Papa did to the window in the Night Before Christmas. I managed to get to Sonar 1 before quarters, and that's what really counts. Today was a story of little issues that caused big headaches. After sweepers, the other STG2 and I tried to write a Danger tag to hang on the circuit breaker in order to tag-out the console for replacing its battery. Except the electronic system wouldn't let us write the correct ID number... even CSOOW had trouble with it when we showed him... Chief had to work on it to get it resolved. And while we were about it, Chief gave me sign-off ability in the system. Finally! Now I'm really worth something to my division!

Once we got the red tag hung, the other STG2 started working on removing the old batteries while one of our assessors had me go over our safe inventories with him. By the time I was done with that, I got the new batteries out of the packaging and watched them be installed, especially since I may be called on to do it myself in the future. And we still had time to go to lunch! (hotdogs and fries today.)

The worst part was after lunch. We had a brief battery test that was easy to do, but then it was put out that we had a big operation involving something else... that ended up not being possible today for several reasons. But as they were deciding how we weren't going to be able to, we hung out waiting for it for three hours. I don't really mind staying late in the day if there's something that needs to be done, but what kills us is when it's a big open-ended question that means we have to sit around waiting past working hours... that is hard to take. I used some of the time to do four or five more pages of my Safety Petty Officer PQS.

Due to the strong winds and rain (mixed with snow), they secured the brow for a while this afternoon. But when they finally let us off, the wind caught my cover and blew it over the side into the water. Another $10 into the drink. Oh, well. At least I could go home.