Decision Point

I was told that we were authorized to wear ACUs, the Army uniform, instead of ABUs, the Air Force uniform, for the trip home.

I hope that's true because all my ABUs are now packed on the cargo container. I won't be able to get to them until we get back. For me anyway, good or bad, the decision has been made.

Oh well. I'm not particularly worried.

If that is the only hiccup, then we're doing pretty good.

I did manage to cram all my stuff in to two large bags, have a spare duffel bag in case the airlines say that either of my bags is too heavy. My orders authorize excess baggage, and I have plenty of excess baggage.

I have to say that while it can be frustrating travelling on someone else's schedule, as a whole, going to and from the theater as part of one big happy AF ground SOF team has its perks. It is allowing me to draw on support resources that the smaller unit I'm augmenting does not have.

My redeployment is scheduled for me. They just tell me when to show up and when our updated meetings are. Upon arrival back in the states, my room at our stops and on base is already reserved for me. They book my flight to my home unit from Bragg. They even drive me to the airport.

Really, that is how it should be in many ways. But my specialty is small and the Active Duty side is the busiest career field in the Air Force. On any given day there may not be anyone at our small detachments to pick up a guy coming home or drive him to the airport. And as a smaller unit, we don't have the support resources of some of larger teams.

My next challenges for redeployment are to double check that my car is in fact ready and waiting for me at my home unit when I get back and that someone is there to pick me up at the airport.

Someone will be. It just takes planning, since we have only one guy in the office full time. And I don't have an actual flight reserved just yet.

I do have plenty of free time to figure it out though. All I really have left to do is pack my carry-on bag and kill off the rest of my ammo.

I've already drafted my return travel voucher to save time when I get back. Receipts from earlier are scanned in already and saved in my email.

I will probably double check how the recovery time built in to my orders works so that I can also file my leave paperwork right away. I should be on orders but completely free through the end of October between the 10-15 days of automatic recovery time and the rest of the leave I've earned during this trip.

That time isn't all accounted for just yet, but much of it will be spent training our new dog while making sure our cats do not feel neglected.

I also need to get everything back in order to start up again at school. I need to start finding a summer job in a delightful market for legal interns. And I need to register for the Patent Bar exam and get serious about studying again.

Oh, and bang out everything on my wife's to-do list.

Though given the state of the legal job market... it is incredibly tempting to fill my next summer with a few more training courses and exercises. Getting paid to skydive and possible scuba dive (as painful and horrible as military dive training is while it weans you off that ugly Oxygen habit)--getting fairly well paid and earning points towards an actual real pension--is very very tempting.

Now that I've sufficiently scared my Mother and maybe have my wife's eyeballs rolled so far back into her head that she actually nees our dog to get around town... I know my second summer of law school is an investment in a future career.