Catching Up

Lots of catching up to do today.

Working at UPS is okay. When I was first hired, everyone kept telling me how sore I'd be. "Muscles you didn't know you had will hurt," they said. Well, no, not really. I hurt a lot less than I expected. But one unusual hurt is my fingers! I cannot believe how sore my fingers have become. I'm what they call a pre-loader, which means that I load packages onto the local delivery trucks, which they like to call cars for some reason. I started out loading two cars, but since I'm Just That Damned Good (TM Triple H), this week they moved me to a three car pull. I've lost about 10 pounds since I started working, and I've noticed that my endurance and strength have improved.

Attended the Illinois Guard's Family Readiness Conference in late April. It was a good time. One of the better conferences. I got paid a little to attend too, and both Ashli and I should be reimbursed for our travel expenses (though that hasn't shown up yet, so I'm beginning to get worried). During the conference weekend, we attended the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum. I highly recommend visiting the musuem if you're in Springfield. Anyway, after we returned to the hotel, Aislynn fell and split her forehead open on the night stand, so we made an emergency room visit at St. John's Hospital. Aislynn needed stitches, but otherwise everything turned out okay. She's much better now!

I volunteered to do an SRP in May. SRP stands for Soldier Readiness Processing, and it is a process that all deploying units go through. I will be on the deployer side of the table, not the deployee. I'll be working with the JFHQ's personnel services branch to ensure everything HR related is squared away for our deploying Soldiers. I'll miss a week and a half of UPS, but they're not holding it against me (and honestly, I won't miss it). Besides, the National Guard pay is better.

Because the SRP is occurring during finals week at South Suburban College, I had to make arrangements with my three instructors to take my final exams a week early. As a result, the last couple of weeks have been extremely busy, which explains why I've made no journal entries. Sleep, UPS, homework/study, school, homework/study, repeat. I'm glad that's over with! I'll be sitting out the summer semester since I already see that finals week will clash with Annual Training in July.