Holiday Duty, Once, Twice

The last two duty days book-ended my extended leave that I've been on, to visit my family in Washington and move my husband out here to Virginia with me.

The first was Memorial Day, Monday, May 27th. Whatever people say, holiday duty can be the best... and this one was by far the best duty day in my memory. There were no drills, and my watch, the first Petty Officer of the Watch, went by quite quickly. First it was the business about the flags for colors... the Pier SOPA (Senior Officer Present Afloat) - the ship on the pier with the most senior captain - was sending mixed signals for how they wanted the flags flown for the holiday. Per instruction for Memorial Day, the largest flags are to be flown from both the flagstaff aft of the ship and the mast... both at half-staff for the first half of the day. Of the four ships on the pier, all were doing something different. It finally got resolved, but it took a good deal of time before it was all sorted out. And I'm pretty sure the SOPA made us raise the flag the whole way before it was time.

The  next issue we had was the intrusion alarm we had. Turned out to be a malfunction, but I had to call away a Security Alert to be sure. So I passed "Security Alert, Security Alert. Reason for Security Alert, intrusion alarm (in a certain space)" over the announcement system. I was so flustered, I forgot the next part of the message that tells the security team to lay to the armory. They figured it out by themselves, though. Then I secured the brow... meaning I stood out on it, allowing no one access to or from the ship.

After watch, I had lunch and then rested for an hour or so. Then I got with the chief who agreed to proctor my Physical Readiness Test. We headed over to Q-80, the pier-side gym, where we found a corner and I did 92 sit-ups, 20 push-ups, and an Excellent on the stationary bike (burning 136 calories in 2 minutes). The Outstanding sit-ups, combined with the Good and the Excellent ratings gave me an overall Excellent score.

Returned to the ship just in time for sweepers, which Chief let me do in my PT gear. She also let me check out on leave right afterwords, and that was very exciting. I went to the pool and swam a 4 or 500 before going home, having dinner, finishing the dishes and doing all my laundry before I left for Washington very early the next morning.

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Back from leave, I had a regular workday on Thursday where I fixed an open purchase request, tried to figure out that one check that's been on hold forever and ever because of our test equipment, and get access to a computer program that I ended up not needing, and talking to supply about orders for parts that were cancelled.

Duty on Friday, which was Flag Day, June 14th, also went pretty well. The workday was more of the same as before. Except this time there was a ship pulling into our pier, and in the afternoon, one pulling out. It's the responsibility of the duty section of the other ship (ours that day) to provide people to take in or cast off the mooring lines. So this I did twice, even though the tech rep for the check came as I was heading out to the first working party. I found out later that he wasn't able to make the test equipment work either... so I didn't feel too bad about not being able to figure it out or miss him looking at it. The ship pulling out in the afternoon was going on deployment, so there were a bunch of families and friends on the pier watching as the ship's company, mostly in dress whites, maned the rails. I saw a destroyer's anchor come up for the first time, and I got pretty excited for my own upcoming deployment as I watched this crew go out.

I had the evening watch, as POOW again, and again it went by pretty quickly. Our watch-bill coordinator was the OOD; it was my first time standing with him, and he gave me more to do than some of the other OODs I've had. I was very glad to be on watch during sweepers, colors, and duty section training... and I was able to get a full night's sleep in my own rack. The Berthing 2 floor had been repaired and finished while I was gone. It is now shiny, new and clean! Got up early on Saturday to take care of the daily checks and the muster report before morning sweepers, and helped sweep up the female berthing as well. Took out the trash as we left, and then freedom!