Home Front Developments (Not Good)

Colleges are the embodiment of the evils of Capitalism (which normally I like..)

So Kelli caught me on instant messenger last night with some new about me schooling. First some background for those of you not in the know. I was enlisted for the first seven years of my career. Once I got 90 credit hours I went to Officers Candidate School. In order to remain in the military you need to finish your degree before pinning on Captain (normally 36 months after commissioning.) In this current time of war, that is waiverable up to two years after promotion to Captain, AND the Army will give you 18 months of paid time off to finish your degree. The plan when I deployed was either return in July to start school in the fall of ’08, OR stay till December to start school in JAN ’09. The LATEST I can start school and finish in time would be JAN ’09. Well…before I left I applied to University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I was accepted the day before I left. Kelli’s news was that they refused 32 semester hours of my transfer credit. This puts me in a bind. There are really two possibilities. The first is apply to a different school that will take all my credit (or remain with Maryland) and move (at government expense) to that location and finish my degree. Neither Kelli nor I want to move again so soon, and now that both my mom and brother Jeremy live near us in Colorado, that’s not an option. The other option is request a two year period to finish the degree or just bust my butt through summer school as well. In any case it has ramifications for my deployment. Before this, I had mixed feelings about when I’d want to come back. Adam Hoffman obviously wanted to come back in July to be with his family. 1LT Hoffmann didn’t want to “abandon” his guys over here and go home early. I arrived in Iraq halfway through last deployment, so I only did 7 months. If I only do 8 months now, that’s 15 months over a 27 month period, which is a lot, but the majority of the unit will have done 27 months over a 39 month period. I don’t know if anyone NOT in the military (to include my wife) can understand how that bothers me, but it does. With UCCS messing around with my transcripts, I really have no choice but to plead my case for going home in July. The nicest thing about being home in July is being able to be with Kelli for our 10th (wow) anniversary on the 18th. If I DON’T get to deploy home until the JAN ’09 semester, I will need work my butt off to finish in time.
I have been eating so much at lunch that I skip dinner. Our nightly meeting start at 2100 (9pm) and by the time they’re done and I fire off an email or two, it’s past midnight, so I sleep through breakfast. I then pig out at lunch…..so I skip dinner.
Today I had 6 hot wings, a ton of onion rings (both delicious), two V8s, a Gatorade, a bowl of this really good pasta/tuna salad, a bowl of vinegar soaked broccoli, and a massive scoop of cookies and cream ice cream topped with nuts and real cream.
I really need to go to the gym tomorrow, but instead I get to go check out what will soon be my sector. I will update as much as I feel comfortable talking about..."Loose lips sink ships."
Adam