Working Weekend and a Medically Messy Monday

Saturday was super long. Little confusion in the morning about if we were operating the wardroom. After breakfast Young and I worked our tails off field-day-ing the mess decks. The cooks were working hard on the galley, and I don't believe we had a break before lunch began. Juggled the jobs around a bit, because I did not have to do the Chief's mess (weekend in port). After lunch we all watched the Florida-Georgia game... so many turnovers! Unfortunately, it took 2 hours for Chief to let us off after dinner, instead of the usual 30-40 minutes. She had us field-day-ing some more... including cleaning under the scullery equipment. We were all ready to leave when we did.

I took the duty van to Town Center for a visit to Panera Bread at 1945 (about 20 min after we were let go). They gave me a free coffee when they noticed my NWU-style laptop bag! Not only that, but when I went back to pick up the chicken noodle soup-to go I paid for, the guys in the back gave me two extra bowls of broccoli-cheddar for free (they were closing soon). I spent all the time there posting the pictures of the dolphin encounter I had at Marineland a couple weeks ago. Wouldn't have been able to finish if they hadn't been open the extra hour for Saturday night.

Sunday was a little better. More easy-going cooks (they rotate every day), and I was asked nicely to field-day the Chief's mess corner of the galley. Inspired to put everything straight, I worked the entire time between meals again. The most difficult thing was cleaning all those salt and pepper shakers; they were a shambles. :) After serving a very satisfying brunch (tuna casserole and grilled sandwiches) I was pretty tired from standing up for the two-hour meal. After taking out the trash, and watching a bit of the Dolphins-Jets game, I took a beautiful, half-hour nap in the back corner. It was grilled steak for dinner... and that was so popular, we ran out for the last half-hour of the meal. Sailors had to satisfy themselves with the baked chicken breasts and legs. :) After everything was cleaned up, a bunch of us watched the Cowboys-Giants game. Nail-biter to the end!

What really surprised me though was after watching an ad for the new movie Lincoln, one of the guys started talking about how Lincoln didn't care about slavery, and how he owned slaves himself! I stood up for the former president and emphatically denied these absurd allegations. Oh, here's a neat site on the topic: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/02/lincoln.html. The cook who swore up and down that Lincoln did, said he found this undeniable fact on the Internet somewhere. Sigh.

It was so surprising, because earlier in the day, while Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was playing on one of the mess decks TVs, another cook swore up and down that Lincoln actually did believe in vampires and sent out military units to destroy them, or keep them from coming here from England. LOL! Where and when will it stop? At least the cook admitted that this was a conspiracy theory. But he seemed convinced of it himself because of "documentary proof". Oh, dear.

~

As for my medically messy Monday, I worked breakfast and then found out after quarters that I was off for the rest of the day. But my name was mentioned on the list for people still needing the yearly Typhoid shot (I was due yesterday, actually). HM1 told me to go to the medical building on base to get my blood drawn for an HIV test (mandatory, of course) first, so after changing into my regular working uniform, I walked all the way to medical... in the refreshingly chilly October wind (that reminded me of my favorite parts of boot camp... when we got to march outside).

The problem was, they didn't have the order in their system. So after sending me to go put my info into the system with records, they said I'd have to get with whoever sent me to put an order in. Unfortunately, I didn't have the quarterdeck's number (it's changed a few times with all our recent moves) and all my friends were not answering. Thankfully, the assistant supply officer was there too, and she gave me a ride back to the ship. But when I dug my hand into my pocket, I realized I had left my ID card at medical. I showed my driver's licence, and both watch stations let me back onto my ship. Thank God, but it scared me!

HM1 had sent the order in, but it got fouled up along the way. As she had me right there, she gave me the Typhoid shot in my left arm. Since she needed to pick something up from medical anyway, she drove me back over there, got me in the system and blood was drawn from my right arm. Drove me back too! So nice! Although punctured twice, and although I was very flustered and frustrated about the whole thing, I found my ID card in the waiting area when we went back to medical, so everything ended well.

I stayed on the ship to eat lunch, and fill out the form for my yearly physical health assessment (PHA), but they didn't have time to finish it with me. Will have to do that tomorrow when we start the weigh-in's for the PRT. So many acronyms!

For the rest of the day, I bummed around on base between noon and six-ish. Did my laundry (took a nap while I did), ate at Pizza Hut, went to the NEX at least twice, and bought a sandwich on my way back to the ship. Ran into someone from A-school the 2nd time at the NEX... turns out she's on the other DDG on our pier... #68... USS The Sullivans. But after dumping my things off at my rack, I went back outside to see if the duty van with my friends going to Town Center was still there... and it was. Four of us Sonar Techs went out to eat at a sushi place, then looked around in B&N, then got cheesecake to go from the Factory on the corner. Took a while to get picked up again, but we all got back to the ship in one piece.